Changing Me
by MisfiredSynapse
Summary: "Doesn't it get lonely?" He paused for a moment, fingers ghosting over the controls. "From time to time," he replied evenly, his tone barely changing. My frown cleared as I joined him near the controls, leaning backwards against the cool metal console. He glanced over, blue eyes unreadable. "It always seems so much better through someone else's eyes." Eventual Doctor/OC.
1. The Chase is On

_**Changing Me**_

_"Doesn't it get lonely?"_

_He paused for a moment, fingers ghosting over the controls. "From time to time," he replied evenly, his tone barely changing. My frown cleared as I joined him near the controls, leaning backwards against the cool metal console. He glanced over, blue eyes unreadable. "It always seems so much better through someone else's eyes."_

-[-]-

**One: The Chase Is On**

It started off as regularly as ever, the day I met him. Them. Her... I'd just come from class and hopped off the bus three stops early, as usual, to pop into the library until they closed just before dark. I had homework to do, of course, though I really couldn't be bothered doing any of it. Still, I figured if I took the books home, it might inspire me to jot down a few notes to make it _seem _like I was trying. I wasn't, if I had to be honest. I was only doing the history course because I had no idea where my life was headed.

So there I was, milling about in the section focussed on the Evolution of Man, browsing for something I might like to read and base my thesis on. Not that I had any idea what my thesis might involve, but nonetheless, I wanted to do something with early settlements and the way us humans had developed. I found several works that sounded interesting, but more for private reading than actual work, and slipped them all back on the shelf with reluctant sighs. Books were my lifeline, lately; so much better than television or movies, since books forced you to _think _and use imagination.

So engrossed was I just being in the presence of so many wonderful pieces of literature that at first, I didn't notice that there was someone else in the same aisle at me, half looking at the same books I'd just discarded and half looking very intently at me. I passed it off for a moment or two, thinking that maybe she recognised my face from the bakery or from school, or perhaps she was just staring at my lime-green glasses. I've never needed glasses, but I've always thought they made me look smarter. Playing to stereotypes was always my forte.

Anyway, I barely paid this woman the slightest bit of attention, until of course she started to speak. "God, you're so young." Her voice was familiar, light with just the slightest husky undertone. I turned to look at her briefly, and found her baby blue eyes locked on me hungrily, as if this was the last chance she'd get to properly see me. She raised a silky, pale hand and swept the light brown bangs out of her eyes, tucking them behind her ears half-hidden by the multi-coloured, chequered golfing hat, and I noticed a shiny, fresh scar running from the base of her thumb across the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry?" I asked, certain she was talking to me as there was nobody else nearby. Her lips flickered in just the barest hint of a smile and I found myself smiling back despite my misgivings and my confusion- there was something about her that made me want to share her secrets. Or have her share mine, whichever was more appropriate.

She stepped closer to me and I didn't back away, even as she leaned in very slightly, studying me all over. I stayed still without knowing why, and she moved away a moment later. "I never realised just how young I- you are. So innocent, safe in a little bubble of ignorance. It's almost tragic..."

Following her lead, I took a few steps in the opposite direction, eager for a bit of a larger gap between me and her. I didn't think she was dangerous, a little odd perhaps, but not dangerous; but I still didn't want to be standing right beside her. Just in case. "Um... okay then," I said, forcing my smile to stay on my face as I ducked into the next aisle, thinking myself safe. Until I caught sight of her eyes peering at me through the shelves.

"Your life's about to change you know," she said. I couldn't see more than her eyes, but I could practically hear the haughty grin in her voice.

I snorted in reply; "I highly doubt it. Unless I win the lottery..."

Her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners and they gained a pretty glint to them, one that once again I found infectious. The drawling of her voice as she retorted quickly made me second-guess my own self-doubt- "It's something much better than that." I ducked to try and see more of her through the shelves, almost regretting putting the space between us.

"Who are you, again?" I asked, curious and just a bit confused. She hadn't told me her name- not that I'd asked for it, but it would still be nice. The way she acted like she knew something I didn't was a bit irritating to be honest, and more than a little unnerving, but I was willing to play along. If this was the biggest adventure I was ever going to have, so be it. A mysterious girl in a library.

She giggled lightly before replying, that same scarred hand brushing across her forehead as if to wash away wrinkles- odd, I had that very same habit. "A... friend. Well, I will be. Technically." She didn't sound so sure herself, and I rolled my eyes.

"Right... and that's not deliberately mysterious, at all," I drawled, forcing as much sarcasm into my tone as possible.

"You love it," she shot back, a gap between books allowing me a full view of her face- a heart-shaped face framed with stylishly messy light brown bangs, sporting two wide blue eyes and a sly grin that practically screamed _superiority._

"How would you know?" I retorted just as quickly, challenging her now. Two could play this game, I thought devilishly, as we were reduced to locking eyes over the spines of books once again.

Her voice, when she next spoke, was soft and almost a whisper. Her tone was fond and warm, almost longing, and tinged with just a little sadness. "I know you better than you'd think, Kiarna." For a moment, I couldn't get over her tone and how wistful she'd sounded when she said it; and then I realised.

I wasn't wearing my name badge, nor did anything in my possession bare my name. Not my full name, anyhow; I gasped and pulled three books down to get a proper look at her, my green eyes narrowed in suspicion and my heart racing properly now. This was all getting just a bit too adventure-y for my tastes. "How do you know my name? Who _are _you?" I hissed, trying to sound strong and demanding.

She just gave me that same lazy grin as before and rested her chin on the shelf, her eyes gazing at me with an expression of utter amusement. I found it slightly patronising, and a little dismissive. "It doesn't matter now. What does matter is that in a few minutes, you're going to meet somebody; a very lonely and broken man. He'll take your hand and tell you to run- trust him, and he'll save your life, and in return you'll save his," she paused for breath here, having spurted everything in one sentence that hardly seemed to use punctuation. Her tone softened as she finished and her eyes held a look of such love it made me burn with jealousy, the kind of jealousy that came from wanting what she obviously had. "He'll be the best thing to ever happen to you, and... most importantly, he will answer all the questions you don't know you have," she said very quietly, her eyes meeting mine as if trying to ram that point home. I nodded, and she disappeared.

I could hear her footsteps on the carpet; she wasn't being exactly quiet. Did she... _want _me to follow her? Either way, I was right behind her as I dropped my library bag near the computers and hurried after her for the doors, trying not to run. "Wait! Please, I don't understand!" I called, a little louder than necessary.

She spun around, brown-black hair flying, and sported that grin again. It seemed like she never stopped grinning, as if my confusion and curiosity was one big cosmic joke to her. "Rule one! The Doctor lies!" she called. I nearly tripped on my own feet as she burst out the door and I was three steps behind.

I wasn't surprised to find that she was at the bottom of the big concrete steps leading onto the street, and she pushed off from the pillar as I started to descend after her, crying; "What?"

"Rule two! Don't wander off!" She was walking backwards now, full of grace and agility that I envied. I wasn't the most athletic person out there in the slightest; I'd much rather _watch _a game of football than actually be involved. I didn't have the co-ordination for it, for starters.

"You're the one wandering off! Just stop a minute, would you? _Wait!" _I was shouting now, fully aware of how loud and how much attention I was drawing. The brown-haired girl spun around on her blue-Chucks-covered feet and broke into a skipping run, half turned to make sure I was following and half making sure I never caught up completely.

She didn't seem bothered at all by the pace she was setting, as if she knew my curiosity would stop me from abandoning the chase. And damned if she was wrong; I wouldn't let her get away without some sort of answer, even if I got lost on the way. "Rule three! If he tells you to run, you run!" she laughed at that one, leaping into the air and spinning around, almost dancing away from me.

I envied her stamina, her grace, her agility- and her shoes, those royal blue Chucks. I'd always, always wanted shoes like that. "_Wait! _I just want to ask you something! _Please!" _I was panting now, almost out of breath and almost out of puff. How much further was she taking me? As curious as I might have been, I would not be chasing her halfway around Cardiff.

She skidded to a stop suddenly, and I stopped too, about a foot away from her. She gave me a serious look and held up one finger, shaking it in my face with a stern expression. "Rule four- he's not always alright. If you remember nothing else, remember that one- he's not always alright." I reached out to hook my hands in her jacket- a leather one, two sizes too big for her but it somehow seemed right. She dodged me and looked almost panicked at how close I'd gotten.

"I just- want to- ask something!" I panted, resting my hands on my knees now. She giggled and smoothed a hand over her forehead and up across the crown of her head, flattening out her lopsided hat so it wouldn't fall off. Again, I noticed the scar, and again I noticed how we shared that same unusual habit. When she didn't move for a second or two, my hope rose- until something chimed on her wrist, and she glanced at her odd-looking watch with a jolt of surprise.

"Oops," she muttered, before looking at me slyly and starting to skip backwards- darn her- away from me. "We're late!" she shouted, spurring me into chasing after her again. Late for what? She still hadn't told me her name! Or how she knew mine! Or what she meant by all those rules!

I rolled my eyes as I ran, which was a mistake as I stumbled on a loose pavestone. I managed to recover in time, but gave an almighty curse- "Bloody hell!"- before straining to double my pace. The brown-haired girl gave me a concerned look but didn't slow down. "Give a girl a break- who are you?" I shouted desperately, my heart and lungs burning with the exertion of running so far so fast. The mystery girl whipped around a corner into an alley, the ends of her leather jacket flying. I flew after her, still shouting. "And how do you know-" I rounded the corner, skidding to a halt and sending little stones flying from under my feet. "My name?" I finished quietly; the alley was a dead end, and it was deserted.

There was a door to my left, but it was locked and when I tried it, the cobwebs over the hinges were undisturbed, showing it hadn't been opened for years. There was nowhere else that girl could have gone- she had disappeared into thin air. But that wasn't- _couldn't be- _possible! People don't disappear into thin air... do they?

* * *

So, there is the pilot chapter! How goes it?

More coming next Thursday, 31th May 2012. Updates weekly thereafter; that is a certainty, as I've completed this story.


	2. The Doctor is In

**Two: The Doctor Is In**

Standing in the alley, I huffed indignantly at the abrupt end to my adventure. At least I hadn't ended up somewhere unrecognisable, somewhere I wouldn't be able to navigate my way back from. With a sigh and a laugh at my own ridiculous imaginationI turned to start the miserable walk back to the library. But that girl, her face, her words- they stuck in my mind and I had almost allowed myself to believe her for one glorious moment. For just one moment, I had let myself believe in the impossible, that I would soon escape the never-ending cycle of school, work, sleep and bills.

I paused at the mouth of the alley as a soft breeze struck up, coming from behind me. But how… I turned, curious, and watched with a wide-open mouth as out of thin air, a tall blue box began to appear. It emitted a strange whirring sound as it faded into and out of sight, a light flashing on top as if warning me away. I couldn't move, transfixed at the sight of it. In the few seconds of watching and listening to _that sound, _I had committed it to memory and sworn to never ever forget it.

I was still staring when the whirring stopped, and out of the doors facing me a man appeared. He was tall, a little muscular, with an angular face and a rather prominent nose. His hair was very, very short, perhaps to hide the fact that he was going bald, or perhaps because he knew that no amount of hair would hide those ears. He was wearing leather, too, the same kind of jacket the Mysterious Girl had worn, and in all he struck a very impressive figure. I wanted to flee, to run, but something kept me glued to the spot.

He seemed to notice me at the same time as he noticed everything else; his eyes widened in surprise and he stuck his hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels as he gave me a slow once-over. "Hello there. Who are you, then?" he asked, his accent definitely not local. Northern England. Fantastic. He was staring at me expectantly and I stammered and stuttered, trying to think of a proper answer that wouldn't sound childish and stupid.

But, instead, I settled on simply blurting out the first thing that crossed my mind; "I could ask you the same question! You just appeared out of nowhere!" I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air. The urge to run was still present and accounted for, but it was more a suggestion now than a full-blown order.

"I did not. I came out of a blue police box," His indignant tone preceded a smug grin, and his eyes- blue, periwinkle blue of an early-morning dawn sky- twinkled with mischief. He stepped to one side as if to draw attention to the box, and I had to admit he was right.

"Which came out of nowhere," I retorted swiftly, desperate to win the argument. Or whatever it was. His grin grew to impossible brightness as he rocked on his heels again. His expression turned thoughtful but I knew better, his eyes hadn't left mine and he was almost challenging me.

"Wrong again!" he exclaimed, leaping back to pet the box doors fondly. I rolled my eyes at him- boys and their toys. "That's impossible, things coming out of nowhere. And believe me when I say that, because I've seen, done, been and travelled with impossible." I didn't doubt him for an instant, and it wasn't just the darkening of his tone and the fact that his eyes gleamed at me.

I shook my head, though I was smiling. "You're mad," I stated.

"No, just pleasantly unbalanced," he was swift to retort, grinning again. His energy was infectious and I let myself relax entirely. He might have been completely mental- a full box of frogs- but I didn't sense any threat from him. If he wanted to hurt me, he would've done it already, wouldn't he? Besides, something about him reminded me of that blue-eyed girl from the library, the one who had lead me here. Something in his eyes… the other-worldly knowledge, the age behind his smile.

"Who are you?" I asked softly, genuinely wanting to know. I liked him, I didn't know why, but I did.

His jaw tightened briefly and his eyes slid from mine as he replied; "I'm the Doc- John Smith. _Doctor _John Smith."

I gave a little gasp of shock and my hand fluttered up to grasp the chain of my necklace nervously; this must be the man the girl in the library told me about... _The Doctor. _My eyes had slipped and my head tilted down as the memory flashed across my mind; slowly, I looked up at him once again, eyes wide and knees feeling weak with anxiety. "Rule one," I said softly, "the Doctor lies."

"What did you say?" he fairly snapped, his eyes narrowed and trained on me suspiciously. His hand delved into his pocket and I took a nervous step back, hoping he wasn't reaching for a gun or anything like that. I wasn't sure I could outrun him even if I was running for my life.

I laughed a shaky, breathless little laugh as I repeated myself, trying to keep my stuttering to a minimum. "T-The Doctor lies." His expression softened as the tension around his eyes fled and his lips unfurled from their pursed arrangement. He tilted his head to the side very slightly, like a puppy spotting something intriguing, and he slowly stepped towards me.

His voice was soft and coaxing as he spoke next, his hands loose by his side- though I did notice he now held a little silver stick in his left. "Have we met before?" he asked, genuinely curious and trying to ease the information out of me gently. "What's your name?"

"Kia," I replied instantly, a little warily. He had just shown me how fast his moods could change- I wasn't sure what would be next to set him off and while I didn't get the danger-vibe from him, I definitely got a be-careful one.

"I've never travelled with a Kia before," he mused, raising the silver stick up and pressing a button. The end poking in my face lit up a brilliant blue as a shrill trilling sound emitted from it. He swept the light up and down me before settling on a point in the centre of my chest, where my necklace ended. His mouth tightened at something he found there and I batted his hand away irritably.

"Clearly, as I don't know who you are," I hissed slightly, abruptly defensive of my jewellery. It was as old as the hills, the silver pocket-watch that had never told the time. It was useless and broken, but it was all I owned that came from my history, and I couldn't even remember a time when I didn't wear it around my neck.

He slid his hand back in his pocket, stowing away the silver device. His eyes met mine again and they were burning with a thousand questions; he had somehow gotten within a foot of me, and I stepped back in alarm at the unexpected lack of distance. "But you do- you called me the Doctor," he murmured, just loud enough for me to hear. I had a feeling that he was puzzling me out in his head, and by the tightening around his eyes I knew he wasn't having much luck.

I hesitated before replying, not knowing _how _I'd known he was the Doctor- _the _Doctor- that the mysterious library girl had told me about. "No, I heard that from someone else," I said nervously, wringing my fingers. Bad habit, I know.

"Who?" he demanded, all fire and rage again. It was exhausting keeping up with him really, the whirlwind of emotions that he exhibited. Still, I couldn't blame him... if I were in his shoes, talking to someone like me, I'd probably be suspicious too.

Especially since I couldn't tell him exactly _who, _though I could try. I quivered under his blue-eyed glare, wringing my hands harder as I tried to formulate a proper, informative answer. "A girl," I blurted out, struggling to find the words to describe her. "In the library. She was so strange... so... mysterious. She had a jacket just like yours... I followed her in here, while we were running, she said... she said that rule one is that the Doctor lies. Then when you said..."

He held up a hand, cutting me off as he nodded and turned away, pacing the width of the alley which was only about three steps either way for him, his long-legged stride. I kept my eyes on his face as he digested this new information, desperately wanting his approval though I couldn't pinpoint just what made me crave it. "Okay. So, strange girl starts telling you about mysterious things and people you don't know, and you _follow _her into a back alley without knowing where it goes?"

"I knew-" I started, and he scoffed loudly to stop me.

"It's a dead end, Kia. Please tell me you didn't willingly walk into the perfect trap." He looked at me expectantly and I opened and closed my mouth as I fought to find a retort. I couldn't very well lie; I _had _just walked willingly into the perfect trap, even if it wasn't exactly a trap. If it _had _been one, I'd be caught. I was unarmed and definitely in no physical condition to fight off a flea; my muscle density hovered around zero on a good day.

I looked down at my scuffing feet, chastised, as I shrugged my shoulders and muttered a little resentfully; "No, I didn't. I don't... I live the other way..." I gestured vaguely in the direction of my flat, feeling suddenly quite stupid and very, very small as his eyes widened imperceptibly and his smile grew, though he wasn't amused- more incredulous.

"You've never explored the area?" he asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

I shrugged again and, with a streak of stubbornness I've never managed to conquer, still tried to argue. "I've seen the library... and the... bakery..." They had fantastic scones.

"What about all the little shops around the corner? I love little shops, don't you? Haven't you ever seen them?" he was gushing just a bit and I giggled at his wild arm gestures and big, brilliant smiles; my hand rose up of its own accord to brush my forehead smooth, hiding my eyes as if ashamed of the laughter, a habit I'd had right from a child. I'd never been more conscious of it in my life.

"I didn't know they were there," I said, the feeling of inadequacy returning full-force now as he fixed me with an earnest, intense stare. I wanted to look away but I didn't, feeling the need to at least win this one-sided staring contest if it as the last thing I'd ever do. I couldn't win an argument against him, but I could win this!

"Don't you ever want to explore?"

"Well, of course I do, but..." I trailed off weakly, shrugging and wondering just why I hadn't explored.

"But what?" he prompted me, and I was struggling now to string a full sentence together.

He had disarmed me, completely and utterly. As a literature and history nerd, words were my weapons, but my arms failed me now. "Well, this isn't exactly a safe area... and I usually go straight home from the library, when it's dark..."

"Oh, come on! Where's your sense of adventure?" he exclaimed, throwing his arms open wide as if to embrace the world and draw it in. His youthful energy made him lose about ten years in my eyes, though there was still an air of experience surrounding him that I found reassuring.

"It's perfectly intact, thank you, and satisfied by _reading _about near-death experiences rather than experiencing them first hand," I groused back at him, like a petulant child being told 'no'.

"Oh, but it's not," he said lightly, knowingly, and I rolled my eyes obviously before placing my hands on my hips.

"Excuse me?" I demanded.

"Satisfied. Your adventure-sense. It's not satisfied just by reading- you're just too careful to indulge in a bit of real-life run-and-hide."

What was with people and thinking they knew me? First that girl, and now _him? _"And _how, _exactly, do _you_ know?"

"It's there, in your eyes, that fantastic little spark of _wonder_. The way you're still here talking to a man who stumbled out of a box, which came from nowhere." He was teasing me, I knew. He knew I knew, too, judging by the grin that was lazily sprawled across his face and the way he leaned against the police box, reminding me that just a few minutes before, he and the box had been nowhere in sight.

"Thought that was impossible?" I teased right back, mocking his haughty tone.

His voice deepened to a gruff rumble and filled me with excitement, the kind of anticipation you get while sitting blindfolded on a rollercoaster that's going upwards- you know you've got to fall, but you don't know _when._ "You haven't seen anything yet," he told me seriously, and I believed him. I _wanted _to see, too, I realised, and was on the verge of asking him when the sound of exploding and screaming sent me stumbling forward to hide behind him as he sprung towards the noise, his grin returning and his hands rubbing together with something akin to glee. "Now, what trouble have I stepped into this time? Shall we go see?"

I stared at him incredulously, unable to believe what he'd just suggested. For all his talk of adventures and exploration, I couldn't believe he'd want to go see just what was causing havoc. "It's probably safer moving _away _from loud noises and screaming," I suggested in vain, knowing even as I weakly protested that it was a lost cause.

"Probably. C'mon, Kia!" He took my hand and I was surprised at the rough texture of his skin against mine; despite that, they fit very well together, my paler skin standing out against his and making me feel a whole lot safer than I had two seconds before. Slowly, I stopped staring at our hands and met his eyes, his burning blue searing into my calm, leafy green. "You can't spend your entire life with your nose in a book- you'll end up reading everyone else's story and never living your own!"

"I have a life! I have a- a job and... school and friends and- and a mortgage to pay! I'm living my life!" I tried to twist my hand away but he wasn't having it; he just held on tighter and stepped forward as I stepped back, in some demented version of a ballroom dance.

"But you're not! You're stumbling through it blindly, eyes closed to anything different because you don't want to tempt yourself with something that might fall away. You're not living, you're barely existing!" he wasn't shouting, but was near enough to it. I flinched at his tone and he was apologetically watching my expression as he tugged on my limp hand.

The screaming came again, closer now and followed by a thudding _clunk-hiss-clunk-hiss _like dusters hitting a chalkboard. "What was that?" I asked nervously.

The Doctor's face had paled slightly as he shook his head imperceptibly, willingly releasing my hand as he rushed to peer out into the street. I followed him, terrified to be left behind. "Oh, no," he said softly.

"What is it?" I whispered, hovering by his arm as I leaned out to see too. "Oh my God." I breathed, the fear being replaced by adrenaline. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder at me and quickly turned away again; I caught sight of a grin on his face and would've rolled my eyes, had we not been in a bit of trouble.

"If I told you to run, would you trust me?" he asked, standing up and backing away from the alley's mouth, his arm held out from his body to propel me backwards and behind him.

_He'll take your hand and tell you to run_... _trust him, and he'll save your life. _The words crossed my mind unbidden, and while I still wasn't entirely convinced he was stable, I made up my mind with one simple, yet extremely effective, word; "Yes."

He gave me a fleeting look as his hand encased mine again; just that contact was enough to have my head clearing and my fear lessening. I didn't know who he was, but I knew I was safe with him. "Run," he said, tone devoid of emotion. He started forward first, pulling me along half a step behind. We dodged fleeing people as we crossed the street, and he moved us through the flying laser-beams with the ease of someone who had done it before. I couldn't help but feel incredibly grateful that he had chosen to help me...

Otherwise, those metal men shouting _delete _with every step would have taken me, too.

-[-]-

Next update: Thursday 7th June

Also, I am endevouring to reply to any and all reviews I receive. If a reply seems a long time coming, don't worry, because I *will* eventually get around to sending you a PM. For now, I'd like to thank those who have reviewed the first two chapters:

**Roses4TheDoctor**

**sashaxh**

**Disney-Princess-In-Disguise** A review on both chapters; so double thank you :)

**Cetacea-of-Time** Again, two reviews for the first two chapters! Thank you, thank you :)

* Yes, I especially updated the content of Chapter Two to thank those who had reviewed Chapter Two. Should I have left these until Chapter Three? Oh well. What's done is done.*


	3. The Game is Afoot

**Three: The Game is Afoot**

Running. I've never been good at it, never liked it. But I couldn't exactly stop, not when this mental bloke in a leather jacket still had my hand in his iron grip. Still, this kind of running I wouldn't complain about, since the alternative would be to _stop _running and let those _things _catch me up. I doubted I could outrun them on my own, without the Doctor's motivation in tugging me along whenever I started to lag, or his concerned glances over his shoulder whenever I stumbled. Which, unsurprisingly, was quite often.

We finally stopped running when the sounds of the metal men had receded, and we could hear the screams as faint echoes of their former strength. The Doctor stopped and spun around; how he had done so that gracefully earned him a glare from me, as I ran forward three or four feet after him- yanking my hand free accidentally- and slowly staggered back to stand next to him, watching the way we'd come warily.

Slowly, my gaze moved to the buildings and street signs, none of which I could recognise. We were definitely still in Cardiff, though, thank _God. _I could hear running water and figured we must be near the river… church bells tolled a few streets away and across the road, directly behind me, was the Rookwood Hospital. Right. I still had no idea where I was, and I wasn't about to ask either; the Doctor's eyes were narrowed and he looked positively _murderous,- _not at me- but at the things chasing us. The screaming was closer still now, and each one darkened the anger on his face.

Besides, I'd probably get some kind of lecture on how I should explore my home city more.

"We need to find whoever's creating them," the Doctor said finally, his tone low and almost a growl. I looked at him in alarm, eyes wide and hands fluttering nervously by my throat.

"W-what do you mean, _find them? _Like… go into the heart of the storm?" I squeaked, abruptly terrified. The Doctor shot me a look of such intense irritation that I backed away, not wanting to leave him but at the same time… shouldn't we find a way to _get away _from the danger, not seek to go directly _into it_?

"Yes," he replied slowly, as if I were slow and he was quite sick of explaining himself to me. Or, a better description might have been, like he couldn't imagine someone being afraid of finding the creator. I wasn't afraid, perse, more like… I had a healthy value on my own survival and intended to ensure it at all costs. "You don't have to come," he continued suddenly, his voice tight and his eyes diverted from me, idly staring at the corner of a building and a car as it sped by. I twitched nervously and bounced on the balls of my feet. "In fact, it would be better if you didn't. Things can get… dangerous… around me."

"Really?" I said shrilly, breathless with adrenaline and a building sense of dread. He wasn't going to _leave _me was he? "I hadn't noticed." His eyes cleared briefly and he smiled, but it was laced with anxiety and almost a compulsive desire to go throw himself in harm's way. I couldn't imagine living life the way he so obviously did, so used to danger and trouble at every turn that he couldn't help but go investigate. Then again, as I thought of simply returning home and never seeing him again, my heart faltered and I was filled with an emotion I can only describe as terror. "Well then," I said finally, calming myself down enough to think clearly. This could be the greatest adventure I ever had in my life, before I returned to work-study-sleep-mortgage. I couldn't pass that up could I?

"Kia, I'm serious," the Doctor rushed to say before I could finish what I was about to say. "You'd be safer away from me… like you said, you have a life to get back to."

"Yeah," I agreed lamely. "But what's the use of a life if you're not doing anything with it?" I was shamelessly ripping off what he'd said earlier, before the running, before the danger. I changed it up a little but the sentiment was the same; I wasn't living, I was barely existing. I never realised just how much I resented that until I thought really deeply about my choices- stay with the Doctor, have an adventure. Go home… _dream _about adventures. My heart fluttered as the Doctor glanced between me and the metal men, before he drew me off to one side and we were running again, his hand in mine.

"We've got to circle around, find the signal! Someone's controlling the Cybermen; they'd need a power source! If we find it-"

"We can blow it up!" I shouted, my voice so much more breathless and uncontrolled compared to his. How he kept his composure while we ran at top speed through a park and climbed over the playground was beyond me; although I noticed I was already better at this running-without-falling business. The Doctor's grip wasn't as tight on mine but I didn't need it; now that I'd chosen him, this life, I was spurring myself on.

He gave a holler of exultation as he leapt off the end of a see-saw, releasing my hand to spin mid-air and land on his feet, still running. I shook my head and laughed at his childishness, my arm straightening almost by instinct until he took my hand again, neither of us batting an eye at the automatic reaction. "Blow it up! Stop the Cybermen!"

"Save the world!" I interrupted, leaping over a low-lying hedge with the Doctor mirroring me. Where we were running to, I had no idea, but he seemed to have some sort of inclination- a hunch, maybe- as he tugged me to the right and we were heading back towards the Cybermen, the danger.

"Atta girl!" the Doctor shouted, squeezing my hand. Strangely enough, I didn't mind that we were possibly heading to our doom. I didn't mind that the next few hours would perhaps be the last of my life. All that mattered was the excitement I felt, and the way the Doctor was guiding me to what I _knew _would be the rest of my life.

Running towards danger, death and defending the Earth.

Before I knew, the running stopped. Now that I'd gotten used to it, I almost wanted to keep going; but that wouldn't have been healthy, seeing as we had to duck for cover every metre or so to avoid the Cybermen finding us. The Doctor lead the way and I followed him blindly- well, almost blindly. I didn't have a clue where we were and forget where we're going; all I knew was that each time we crossed a street, the presence of the metal men was thicker.

"Doctor?" I whispered suddenly, having had a chilling thought. He stopped and looked back at me irritably, silently telling me to be quick or shut up. Instinctively, I inched forward and squashed against him, making sure we were both in the shadows and out of sight behind a dumpster sitting behind Tesco's. "Just a question- how are we gonna blow it up?"

Not that I knew what 'it' was, or even where it was, but still. Last time I checked, I couldn't manufacture a bomb out of wishes and wants. I doubted the Doctor could either, and the look on his face confirmed my suspicions. He gave a rough sigh and turned to sit on the ground, me following a moment later. "I need to see which Cybers these are. If someone's creating them, they'll have the emotional inhibitor codes- enter those, and they should self-destruct. If they're naturally-evolved, I'll... think of something."

"So we have an almost-plan," I nodded, and he nodded along with me. "Next question; how are we gonna find the source?"

The Doctor lunged at me suddenly, his hand covering my mouth. I gave a squeak and he shushed me harshly, the both of us falling silent to allow a single Cyberman to pass. In his metal arms, he carried what looked to be a microwave, and didn't notice us. As soon as his footfalls faded, the Doctor's blue eyes met mine again and widened as he noticed the position he'd put us in. Namely, me, trapped under him, his hand on my mouth and the other propping him up. Slightly compromising and very uncomfortable; he wasn't exactly _small._

He scrambled away and I took a breath, straightening myself out with a glare in his direction. Whatever snippy comments I may have had died away as he grabbed my hand and jerked me to my feet. "Follow the leader," he nodded after the Cyberman, and quickly darted away, keeping close to the wall.

I mimicked his behaviour as we headed down the back streets, twisting and turning. My heart sank with each corner revealing a total lack of result, and soon the sinking heart turned into stomach-twisting dread. Something wasn't right... surely we'd have run into someone else by now, another Cyberman at least. But there was nothing, nobody but the one we were following.

The Doctor must've picked up on my unease because he dropped back to walk beside me, instead of two feet ahead. He gently guided me off the road and into a wooden cubby house used by kids, abandoned now. We huddled there and he muttered under his breath, while I stared at the skyline and tried to get my bearings. Wherever we were, it certainly didn't look like Cardiff anymore, though I knew it had to be. That brand-new satellite tower was one of four installed over the UK, in London, Glasgow, Dublin and Cardiff, ever since the ghosts started appearing all over the world... hang on...

"Doctor," I muttered, kicking myself for not seeing it before. _How _had I not seen it before? Brand-new satellite tower that apparently does _nothing? _No boosted phone signals, no extra channels on telly, no _nothing? _It was just there, a shining tower of metal, with no purpose for improving facilities for the general public. But of _course! _It had to be to do with the Cybermen, a power source, a transmitter, anything!

The Doctor crawled over and followed my pointing finger, straight at the tower. I didn't need to say another word for him to apparently read my mind, because he grabbed my hand and squeezed lightly. "Clever girl." I beamed. No other explanation for it, but I beamed with pride and joy. So I'd been slow on the uptake, terrified out of my wits, but even in the half-hour of knowing the Doctor... hearing him call me clever made me beam.

_He'll be the best thing to ever happen to you... _that's what the Mysterious Girl had said, the one who lured me out of the library and into the street, and finally right to the very point the Doctor arrived. I still had no clue who she was, though to my credit I hadn't been thinking about her all that much. "There's three more in the UK," I whispered, almost under my breath. "They're going up all over the world."

"Transmission towers... but that would need enormous amounts of power, to broadcast globally from a few fixed points... how are they boosting their signal?"

"Satellites," I muttered, answering his question the same time as he reached the conclusion. "Every country has their own satellite... to boost the clarity of the ghosts..." He gave me a hard stare at the mention of 'ghosts', but blinked and looked back at the tower a second later. I know it sounded strange, but they'd been around for months now. Ghosts just appearing out of nowhere, every morning and afternoon. I tended to avoid going out when they were; they gave me the creeps.

"It's the Cybermen," said the Doctor quietly. His eyes glowed with barely controlled rage and in that moment, I thought I knew what the Mysterious Girl meant when she said _lonely and broken. _He certainly looked to me like something had hurt him, badly, and that even his own life meant less than nothing in the wake of it_. _"If they're up all over the world, we'd better get started. I might be able to route the destruction through them all, stop the invasion before it begins..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "We'll go after dark. Easier to be invisible."

"So now we wait," I said, trying to smile. The Doctor nodded back at me, and though I desperately wanted to question him with every burning query in my head, I held my tongue and simply watched the sun slink towards the horizon. With every inch it dropped, my anxiety heightened; as soon as the world fell dark, we'd move, and we'd attack.

If all went accordingly to plan, the Cybermen satellites would fall like dominos.

But who would come out alive?

-[-]-

Sorry, had to stop it there. Hopefully things seem to be getting interesting? They were when I was writing it!

- This story takes place during 2009, in Cardiff. This incident with the Cybermen and the 'ghosts' will be connected with events later in the Doctor's timeline... a very sarcastic ten points to whoever guesses what it's linked to.

Also, I'm terribly, terribly sorry to all of you who have been trying to follow this story only to find the title/summary keeps changing. It's just, whenever I proofread my chapters before posting, I find quotes I didn't know I'd written from forever ago. They sound terribly good in my head and I decide to use them, simply because I am unsatisfied with previous titles. And now, I've finally made up my mind, for good, on a title I'll be using from now on. Again, terribly sorry for the confusion, but the title I worked under for the entire span of writing the story won't make sense for a long, long time yet, so I've had to think very hard very quick, which is never a healthy thing. New, and final, title is "Changing Me".

Aand, using the program 'Photoscape', I have made a cover for this story! I've set it as the cover for FFN, but since it's a landscape piece I'm not sure it can be seen too well. I've uploaded it to my livejournal, too, the link to which can be found in my profile.

Anyway, the next update will be within the week- either Wednesday 13 or Thursday 14. Depending on when I'm on the computer. For the time being, enjoy!


	4. Into the Storm

**Four: Into the Storm**

"Time," the Doctor murmured, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. We'd managed a few snippets of conversation, mainly me asking questions and him giving me short, concise answers that did nothing to ease my curiosity in the slightest. He even managed to ask me a few questions, simple ones that didn't give me any great insight into him, nor him into me. It was just as well, I guess, because the last thing I wanted was to get into my life story with a bloke I may or may not die with soon.

"Brilliant," I replied breathlessly, hardly able to hear over the rushing of blood in my ears. My heart pounded against my ribcage and knocked the breath out of my lungs hard and fast, my eyes almost spinning in their sockets. I followed the Doctor out of the cubby, on my hands and knees and shaking as I stood up. I found that he hadn't moved more than a foot or two away, and smiled back at me.

We didn't move for the longest time, allowing my heart to slow into something resembling a healthy BPM rate. The moment my breathing evened just a little, the Doctor tipped his head in the direction we were heading, and slunk away through the ever-darkening evening. The streetlights lit the roads like floodlights on a football field, so we kept well away from those. Not easy to do, really, since our target lie by the side of a main road, atop a bunch of office buildings for Cardiff's branch of HC Clements; London's Fancy Locksmiths.

"Try to stay on the dark side," the Doctor whispered to me, nudging me to his right and into the darkest part of the shadows. I didn't miss the fact that my safety meant he was halfway exposed. "If we're caught, you run, hear me?"

"And leave you?" I whispered back, slightly harshly. "What chance do you think I have on my own?" He didn't answer, but his silence was reply enough. It was obvious what I was without him; _dead. _A few steps later, his hand caught mine and held tightly, forcing me to walk a step closer to him. Trapped between the Doctor and the walls; his jacket smelled lightly of peppermint and something strangely familiar, but then again… _not. _Like something old and brand new at the same time; it was slightly intoxicating, truth be known.

"Alright," he amended, and I almost caught the barest hint of a grin on his face. "We'll go in the back way, up the service stairs to the top. I'll rewire the satellite tower for the codes, then we'll head down to the control centre to transmit them, which..." he held up that buzzing blue stick, waving it about like a magic wand before bringing it back, close to his face. "Is on the fourth floor. Hopefully they'll have a big red button... I like big red buttons."

I shot him a look and caught the smile full-on this time, grinning back at him and squeezing his hand; "You're the boss," I murmured, giggling insanely when he bounced our hands and crept forward. We inched around the building on tiptoe, me watching our backs and the Doctor leading the way. Oddly enough, I was itching to _run _rather than sneak around, and all this nervous energy waiting for something to happen was setting my teeth on edge. At the back of HC Clements, where the shadows lead to the building next door, we encountered our first obstacle in the form of a ten-foot-tall fence topped with three feet of razor wire. I gulped at the sight of the military-grade defence and almost wanted to back away, but the imposing tower didn't seem to faze the Doctor as he tugged out that blue stick again, and the padlock keeping the gates shut burst open. "What _is _that?" I snapped, intrigued.

"Sonic screwdriver," he muttered back, shoving the device in my free hand. I managed to examine it and keep walking at the same time, slipping it back in his pocket when I was done.

"What, no laser-gun?" I asked him quietly, snickering a little at the disgusted look he sent my way.

"I hate guns."

"But laser-guns are cool," I retorted. He looked fit to reply but, as we reached the service entry, a roller-door rattled open and the Doctor reacted instantly, almost throwing me against the wall and pressing against me, the darkness of his clothing blending in perfectly compared to my light green shirt. I didn't breathe, eyes wide and terrified, as a legion of Cybermen emerged and clunked off towards main street, perfectly in sync.

As soon as they disappeared, the Doctor moved; grabbing my hand and pulling me along, under the roller-door as it started to descend. It hit the ground with an almighty crash and I squeaked, instantly regretting the noise as a floodlight illuminated the room. Cybermen surrounded us, unmoving but real as day, and I could've died right there of fright. The Doctor walked right up to one and tapped on its face; the hollow echo allowed me to relax minimally and gently approach the one nearest to me.

"Dead, just shells," he confirmed, as I ran my hand cautiously over the cool metal. It felt smooth and almost electric, buzzing slightly under my touch. An inexplicable emotion coursed through me then; half fear and half excitement, with a good dose of bravery to boot.

"What are they, Doctor?" I asked, my voice quiet but still audible. I'd moved along now, walking before the line of ten like the Queen inspecting the troops.

"Humans," he replied darkly. "Humans who removed from themselves the very essence of being human; their emotions." I shuddered as he spoke, his voice terrifying and exciting at the same time. "They meshed themselves into a mechanical shell, calling it an upgrade. Often, they're not willing patients... which is why, if we destroy the satellite signal powering the emotional inhibitor-"

"They'll die of heartbreak," I murmured, nodding. In the shiny reflection of a Cyberman's face, I saw the Doctor watching me carefully, and felt my eyes well up when he nodded, his fists clenched around empty air. He seemed such a lonely figure standing there, surrounded by the fallen Cybermen... like an avenging angel stands over the bodies of his enemies. I wished suddenly that I had an artistic bone in my body, so I could paint that scene and keep it forever, as much as the sight of him broke my heart.

"C'mon," the Doctor said finally. "The longer we hang about, the more chance of being caught." I nodded and turned away, hurrying after him through the door and into a dimly lit and blessedly empty hallway. After a moments' pause, he turned left and started to run; I followed a step behind, knowing we were only running for the sake of running.

The next door we came upon was a janitor's cupboard- as proclaimed by the sign that neither of us had bothered to read. A few more steps down the hallway found another door, leading to another Cyber-storage unit, with another fifty odd dead shells. I felt the same chill returning as we gazed upon them for a moment, the Doctor counting under his breath; he slammed the door a moment later and stalked off, me the rat to his piper.

We didn't say a word, not needing to as we finally found the stairs, and both took them two at a time. Six flights up we came to a blessed halt before a ladder, my feet and legs burning and my lungs feeling like they would burst. The Doctor seemed hardly ruffled by the exertion and nodded for me to go up first. I held up one finger and took a deep breath or two, trying to force my second wind to hurry up and arrive. God, I really needed to run a bit more, get into shape...

At the top of the ladder was, predictably, a door, which lead to the roof. Standing there with the wind blowing through my hair, I stared up at the tower and felt so incredibly small. And cold, actually. I moved towards the edge, dropping to my knees a few feet back to crawl over and look down to the front of the building, where I could watch the few streets around- Cybermen patrolled everywhere, the city was crawling with them. At the very least, this part of it was.

"Oh, my God," I whispered, suddenly aware of how difficult this operation would be. Even though the Cybermen weren't technically _human, _they had been once and I wasn't so sure I could help the Doctor kill them, even if it would save the world. I felt him approach beside me and heard his quiet mathematics- up to six hundred now, including the shells downstairs. I felt sick at the thought. It didn't sound like much, but the Cybermen didn't look easy to kill, and I had no doubt that just six hundred could cause all sorts of havoc.

"Kia, I need you to guard the ladder," the Doctor murmured suddenly, as we backed away from the edge and he headed to the fuse box clearly controlling the satellite tower. Flipping open the cover, we were presented with a control panel that definitely didn't look earthly; I couldn't even read half the symbols on the keyboard. "I'll deal with this, keep watch," he said again, a little impatiently this time. Scurrying off, I cracked open the door to the roof and looked down, baulking at the sight.

Cybermen looked back at me impassively, and at the sight of my face, the one closest to the ladder stepped onto the first rung, beginning to climb slowly. "Damn it!" I slammed the door shut and grabbed a piece of metal cord lying nearby, wrapping it around the door handle and tying it to a chimney nearby. It was flimsy and likely wouldn't hold long, but it bought me time. "Cybermen coming up the ladder!" I shouted to the Doctor, who looked up in alarm.

"With me, then!" he shouted, and I joined him by the panel. He plugged his sonic screwdriver into a USB port- though the size and shape was totally different, it still somehow worked- and pressed the button. A moment later, I felt my ears pop before the Doctor and I were blown backwards, skidding across the roof and slamming into the slight rise that formed the edge. I bounced, unluckily, and nearly fell- if it weren't for the Doctor grabbing the back of my shirt and hauling me away, I would've gone right over to the street six floors down.

"Th-thanks," I breathed, shaking my head and trying to get my brain and body working in co-operation again.

He flashed me an apologetic smile. "Sorry- sonic wave, transmitted through the heads of all Cybermen. It'll knock 'em down for a few minutes, but that's it."

"We'd better get a move on, then," I said, grinning with excitement as he helped me up and rushed back to the console. He tugged his screwdriver out and gave the mangled end a look of horror, almost descending into full-blown panic mode had I not swatted his arm and brought his attention back to the controls. "You work magic, I'll tell you when they're up!" I shouted, running to the staircase door and pressing my ear against it. I tried not to think about how we'd get out of here- either crawling over dead Cybermen or leaping across to the roof to HC Clements'; either way, a bloody terrifying solution.

I couldn't hear anything through the wood and my courage peaked as I cracked it open and watched the bodies lying in a tumble at the bottom of the ladder. I could see them twitching with signs of life and gritted my teeth, clinging to the edge of the doorframe and casting quick glances back at the Doctor; he was hopping from one foot to the other as he worked frantically to destroy the satellites orbiting the earth and all the towers in the major cities around the world.

"Kia! I can't get this to go- we'll have to find the control centre!" the Doctor shouted, frustrated, as he slammed the cover of the console down. He motored towards me and leapt down the ladder, landing in a heap at the bottom, kicking the arm of a Cyberman away in disgust. I followed him slower, climbing down the ladder at a pace that wouldn't break my ankles. The moment my feet touched the floor, he grabbed my hand and we were off, running down the stairwell and dodging the lifeless bodies of the Cybermen... which weren't looking so lifeless anymore.

"Waking- up!" I managed to pant, through breathing deeply and keeping my rhythm steady. The Doctor glanced back worriedly and focussed ahead, pulling me faster and faster until I was sure I'd absolutely _die _of exhaustion before this was over. The Doctor released me to jump down an entire set of stairs, my feet pattering down after him, and he barrelled out the stairwell door with me a step behind. We skidded to a halt and stared, amazed at the sheer size of the computerised controls. "Someone has far too much time on their hands," I muttered breathlessly, carefully walking forward and gazing around.

The Doctor pulled face and rolled his eyes, closing the stairwell door and blocking it from opening by way of a chair wedged under the handle. "It won't hold them long. We've got to find the master terminal."

-[-]-

**Woo, four chapters already! Thanks to those who reviewed... and I hope you're proud of me, I've kept the title the same for a full week! Yay!**

**Anyway, how goes things thus far? Hopefully Kia's a likeable character... she's kinda my brainchild, so I'm anxious to know what people think of her. Next Update: Wed 20th June.**


	5. Domino Effect

**Five: Domino Effect**

"It's not the big shiny one on the pedestal, is it?" I asked, pointing behind him to a large, curved desk- the only one with a spotlight on, and the largest Cyberman I'd seen yet sitting in the desk chair. The metal man wasn't moving and he hadn't fallen over, so I assumed he was just a shell… but the last 'shells' we'd encountered woke up and followed us to the roof…

"That's it, Kia," the Doctor breathed, bouncing up to the computer and turning it around. He kept one eye on the Cyberman as he worked, and I turned to explore the rest of the room, not sure what I could possibly find but certain anything was better than just standing around waiting. My body was on fire, aching with the efforts of the last few hours, and my brain was foggy with the want of sleep, but I was far too buzzed with adrenaline to stop and nap.

As I wandered around the perimeter of the room, I noticed something interesting- security cameras, trained on every portion of the building. They still worked, and each of the twenty screens I could see showed Cybermen marching. I had no doubt whatsoever that they were marching our way, ready to _delete _us for trying to sabotage their plans. Dear Lord, there's a lot of Cybers on those screens… "Doctor, the army's coming," I called, a tiny waver in my voice the only thing that betrayed how afraid I really was. It had seemed like a good idea at first, saving the world, but now as I faced the possibility of death for sure I wasn't so certain that this is how I wanted to die.

"I know," he said, sounding much closer than I'd've thought. I looked up and found him a step or two away, his arms held limply by his side with defeat. "The codes need to be transmitted from the roof," he said heavily, and I fell into the seat conveniently placed behind me, my hand flying to cover my mouth as tears sprang to my eyes. The first greatest adventure I ever had… would end up getting me killed. Why had I ever agreed to this mad plan again? Going directly _into _the Cyberman's nest? I turned to watch the screens again, hearing the clank-hiss-clank-hiss of Cybermen footsteps outside the door, and then they knocked. The walls rattled and I closed my eyes, breathing raggedly as the Doctor placed a hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry," he murmured helplessly.

The sound of his defeat and despair sparked something in my brain, a long-suppressed stubbornness that I worked very hard normally to keep away. It reared its head like a giant beast ready to strike, talons embedding themselves in my heart and pulling me to my feet. "This building has a fire escape," I said, my eyes fluttering closed as I pictured the outside of the building, the fleeting look I'd had as we arrived. "It goes to the roof, and if I'm right, there's an entry from…" I walked with my eyes closed, my brain somehow navigating my body through the mass of cables and tables forming the control centre. My hands moved of their own accord and opened a window, the cool wind flowing in forcing my eyes to snap open.

Outside the window, a metal landing sat innocently, and as I looked up and down, would lead us from the fourth floor to the sixth- and if we were lucky, to the ground once this was done. "Kia, you little genius," the Doctor breathed, grabbing my shoulders and yanking me against him in a hug. I blushed with pride and lead the way out onto the landing, sticking close to the building to avoid being spotted from the ground. The Doctor crawled out beside me and shot me a grin, bright in the darkness and the slight illumination from the streetlamps below.

I grinned right back and reached to tug the window down to avoid detection- just as the door and the chair on the other side of the room burst open with Cybermen pouring in. I snapped the window shut and nodded to the stairs. "They're in!" I cried, panicking slightly as my confidence fluctuated and I nearly descended into a full-on attack. The Doctor eyed me curiously, almost as if he could see the battle my brain was creating- between fear and _knowing _what to do without actually thinking about it.

Abandoning stealth for speed, we thundered up the fire escape with the Doctor bursting onto the roof four steps before me. I paused to glance back the way we'd come and tripping on the final step, sliding back down to the landing on the fifth floor. The fourth floor landing supported three Cybermen now, standing in a triangle formation and glowing in the minimal light. The lead Cyber reached out to touch the metal railing of the fire escape and I remembered watching them _delete _before- their hands could _electrify _and I was right in the firing line.

"KIA!" The Doctor shouted, panicked and afraid for me. He leapt down to the landing beside me as I scrambled for my feet, aware of the metallic voice behind me crying out.

"_Delete! Delete!"_

We ran, always running, and I heard the _zing _of electricity flowing up the metal to catch us before we reached the top. Time slowed and I was hyper-aware of everything around me, from the trembling of the metal groaning under the weight of another Cyberman to the electricity whooshing ever closer to the pressure and warmth of the Doctor's hands on my waist to the thudding of my own heart and the harsh rasping of my breath. I barely felt the moment my feet left the staircase, propelled into the air by the Doctor, who held me away from the electricity while the charge struck him full on.

He grunted in pain but remained standing, holding me aloft and safe. I felt his grip on me tighten to almost a painful point, and I heard the scream of metal giving way as a fifth Cyberman attempted to occupy the landing below. The staircase snapped away and the Cybers tumbled down soundlessly, landing in a crashing pile five floors down. The Doctor fell too, then, our landing luckily still mostly intact. However, it was tilting dangerously and as I glanced up, I noticed the top of the metal was coming undone. We were going to fall…

"Doctor!" I cried, grabbing his hand as he slipped towards the edge. I wasn't strong enough to lift or move him, but I could keep him from going over. Desperately, I wedged my foot against a tiny ledge on the end of the torn landing and felt for the Doctor's pulse; nothing. "No, no, no, _no!" _I muttered, tears springing to my eyes as I started CPR. What it would achieve I had no idea, since the most medical training I'd had was applying plasters to paper cuts. "Come on, come _on! _Wake up!"

Pushing him up, I managed to get some leverage on his shoulders and half drag him onto the more steady stairs, sure I was hurting him but more concerned with getting us both safely onto the roof. Just as we made it to the top landing, me having exhausted my knowledge of expletives, I heard the sharp _poing _of the screws becoming loose; the staircase shrieked as the metal tore and I sobbed blindly, casting a petrified glance at the ground, which swam in my watery vision, I choked on a sob at the sight of the Cybermen army waiting to catch us. If the fall didn't kill me, then they certainly would.

I was exhausted through and through. The last few hours of my life had been swinging between extremes; first, the painful fear of dying, then elation at the possibility of survival, back to fear, back to hope… having it repeatedly crushed was killing my energy and no amount of adrenaline would save me now, not when I was all but giving up. I was ready to fall, I suppose, and I closed my eyes and buried my head in the Doctor's leather jacket to avoid watching my death set upon me. And it was there I heard the most wonderful sound; a heartbeat.

Slowly, it started up, few and far between. But in the few seconds I listened I heard it go from slow to normal to fast, and then to something amazing; _double. _Two heartbeats… I shook my head in disbelief, sitting up and all but ignoring the shuddering of the staircase. If the Doctor was alive… "Come on!" I shouted, slapping his cheek a little harder than necessary. I didn't have the physical strength remaining to haul him over the edge, though as the fire escape dropped a foot or two down and I shrieked, I realised we were level with the sixth floor windows.

In a final surge of energy or bravery, I'm not sure which but I know it was fuelled by pure adrenaline and _don't wanna die here, _I kicked at the window and it shattered around my foot, littering the floor inside and my shoe with shards of glass. The Doctor stirred as I continued kicking, frantically and desperately fighting for my life. There was no doubt or grace about my erratic movements, which didn't cease until I had a gap big and clean enough to jump through, pulling the Doctor after me. Just as his feet cleared the edge, the fire escape collapsed, and I fell back with the Doctor's weight atop me, gasping and groaning with pain and exhaustion.

I didn't move for the longest time, and I was almost certain I could and would drift off to sleep for a bit, had the Doctor not chosen that moment to wake up. He launched himself to his feet, patting himself down like he was missing something, whirling about and flapping his arms. Aching, I rolled to my feet and observed the room we were in, letting him have his fit of insanity. As if leading me here wasn't insane enough to begin with…

"You saved my life," I heard him say, his voice high with disbelief. "You saved _my _life! Why did you do that?"

"Because the alternative was clearing you off the road, and I hate cleaning," I muttered in reply, almost dismissive of my efforts. Honestly, it was no more than he'd done for me- and _how _had he done that? All that electricity should've killed one or both of us, and yet while he'd held me I hadn't felt a thing. And he was still alive… I was beginning to truly see that there was something _not quite right _about the Doctor, though I should probably have figured that from the moment he stepped out of his impossible blue box.

"Kia," his hand caught mine, turning me towards him, and in a brief moment of clarity I could see the storm behind his eyes. A twisting inferno of conflicting emotions; fear and uncertainty, gratitude and wonder, curiosity and determination. "Thank you." He pulled me in and I went willingly, quietly marvelling at the fact that in all my life, only one other person had managed to get through my defences enough to hug me as often as the Doctor had. And that person was my mother, so I don't think the comparison is really effective.

I hugged him back, though, liking the way my own head calmed down enough to not pound agonisingly loud inside my pressurized skull. A headache, one of the only constantly recurring themes in my life- headaches. Migraines to be precise, sometimes getting so bad it was all I could do not to lie in the road and wait for a lorry. "You too," I replied, barely a whisper, and I closed my eyes briefly. Only briefly, because the moment I closed them all I could see was his suffering expression as he saved me from the Cyberman's electricity.

He pulled back after a moment or two, chucking me under the chin as he headed for the doors, me on his heels. We didn't speak as we hurried back to the roof, and the Doctor ran to the bottom of the satellite tower and the control case. It was blessedly still working, and he stood staring at it for a moment or two before entering a series of numbers straight from memory. If anything was another clue to his _not-normal-ness _it was the fact that the sequence stretched into the thirties, far beyond anything any human could memorise in the few minutes he'd had.

His had hovered over the transmit button, and his gaze darkened. "Press this, they die," he murmured. I knew he wasn't exactly talking to me but I felt compelled to reply anyhow.

"And the world is saved," I whispered. He glanced at me darkly and I read the regret on his face as plainly as I felt it in the back of my mind. The Cybermen were, at their core, _human, _and to kill on that great a scale set my teeth on edge. I could only imagine what it felt like to do it, and the Doctor had clearly done this before; he'd said as much the first time we saw them- the way he spoke told me he was painfully familiar with them… _if someone's creating them, we'll need the emotional inhibitor codes… they should self-destruct._

"They still die," he growled, and before I could say anything else he slammed his hand down on the button. Anguished shrieks rose throughout the city and I shuddered listening to them echo; all those creatures, falling down like dominos, right across the city- hopefully the world. The Doctor kept his eyes on my face and I knew he was judging my reaction to what he'd done; although I was sickened by the scale of deaths, and a little afraid of how quickly and ruthlessly he'd destroyed them, I was relieved that the danger was over and my world was safe.

* * *

And so brings the end of the Cyberman storyline... for now. You'll notice that I mentioned the 'ghosts' appearing all over, but didn't mention the Daleks. This is because, from what I could discern from the episode, the Daleks barely managed to take London before being sucked back into the Void, so I took this to mean that they didn't reach Cardiff. Therefore, Kia doesn't know what they are, and the Doctor doesn't know they survived the War.

How did you like Chapter Five?


	6. She Called It Home

**Six: She Called It Home**

Collapsing seemed like the only attractive reaction to the realisation that it was _over, _and so I did, slumping down to sit cross-legged on the roof of the Satellite GPS building, my head in my hands. It hadn't stopped pounding for what seemed like hours, and tears leaked out the corners of my eyes as my body ached and my heart settled into a somewhat healthy rhythm. I could see the Doctor's shoes in my peripheral, not that I was overly concentrating on him at that point.

"You alright?" he asked finally, quietly, voice laced with uncertainty. I snorted with laughter; shouldn't I be asking him, the man who had saved _me _and nearly died doing so, if he was alright? Somehow, the question didn't seem to do justice to all I owed him, and a niggling doubt in the back of my mind told me that even if I asked, it was unlikely I'd get the truth out of him.

"It's over," I whispered, possibly louder than I intended. I wasn't sure at that point, my eyes and head still spinning- albeit, much slower now. "They're gone." The Doctor sat beside me and rubbed my back, clearly misinterpreting my relief for devastation. Yeah, there was a bit of regret and lingering fear there, but nothing huge and relief definitely held the majority vote in the emotion department. I sniffled and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand, suddenly aware of how little I was wearing and how cold it was on the roof, the pre-dawn air chilling me to the bone. I hadn't thought to wear a coat- left it in the library with the rest of my stuff, having always intended to go back and collect it.

"C'mon," the Doctor whispered finally, as sirens started blaring and the human race re-emerged into their devastated streets, taking stock of the destruction and how much they'd lost. Probably re-evaluating their entire perceived quality of life, too, figuring that their problems were minimal and trivial now that they'd seen _true _hardship and horror. I was certainly taking a long hard look at myself, at how sheltered I'd been just thirteen hours earlier. "Kia, I'll take you home." The Doctor held his hand out for mine, and I took it without a word.

We walked through the near-empty streets, listening to people calling and shouting to one another, the sounds of prayers of thanks and the cries of grief at lost loved ones weaving through the streets. The Doctor and I were silent, listening to the city of Cardiff coming to terms with the last few hours and deciding where we'd go from here. Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as we walked by a pile of dead Cybermen; I couldn't help but wonder who they were _before. _Were we hearing their families crying? Was that somebody's mother, now dead and lifeless, partly thanks to me?

The thought made me feel sick and I stumbled over a crack in the road, hardly able to upset myself before the Doctor caught me and steadied my balance, his usually bright blue eyes deadened with an unreadable emotion. I didn't dare ask what he was thinking nor if I could help; whatever he was battling with, I didn't want any part of it. Rather, I almost figured we were battling with the same thing; guilt. Guilt for having no choice in what we did, in ending the attack so violently. Guilt for not being able to do it sooner, or with less casualties.

Before I knew it, we were back on the same street leading by the mouth of the alley in which I'd first met the Doctor. It seemed so long ago and looking back on it, I remembered how _excited _I'd been just following that Mysterious Girl. That had seemed like the adventure of a generation, just a lifetime ago, and now I couldn't help but snicker at myself. If _that _had been an adventure, then the hours that followed... well, they were so much more.

"I don't see what's funny," the Doctor said flatly, his hand removed from mine quite quickly.

Realising he thought I was laughing at the horror, I hurried to cover myself. "It's just... twelve hours ago, I thought your impossible blue box was the scariest thing I'd ever seen... now, though..."

He stared at me incredulously for a moment or two, before his lips twitched and he smiled gently, taking my hand again. He didn't say a word but his eyes seemed lighter, his step more springy, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. We turned into the alley and he released me again to run to the doors, checking around the outside very quickly, cataloguing any damage. "Look at that," he said to me, full of the manly pride one gets around his vehicle of choice. If that's even what the box was... "Full-scale Cyber-invasion, and not a scratch. Oh, you clever girl..."

I shook my head, smiling to myself. No matter how strange or impossible a man might be, he still had that sense of fondness for his box as most men had for their cars. Because although he'd said _girl, _his eyes were on the blue wood, and he hardly seemed to notice I was still there. "I guess you'll be disappearing again, then?" I asked, leaning against the brick wall. He whirled around to stare at me, for a moment looking confused as to why I was still there, before his expression cleared.

"No, not quite," he muttered, approaching me quickly. "Kia... can I see your necklace?" he asked, and my hand flew to cover the slight bump it caused under my shirt. Instantly defensive, I took a step back and regarded him cautiously.

"Why?"

Simple enough question, I thought, but his eyes hardened at the sound of it and he stepped towards me as I stepped back, quite suddenly nervous. I'd seen this expression before- it was the same one he'd worn just an hour ago, when he stopped the Cybermen. Now he was directing that fury towards me and it was... unnerving. "Please," he bit the word out, realising that I wasn't about to give it up if he was menacing me. His eyes cleared suddenly and he stepped back, holding out his hands in a silent apology.

Breathing out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, I bit the inside of my cheek and slipped the chain from around my neck. I felt naked without it, the old fob watch that was stuck shut and decorated with swirls and what looked like the gears of an old clock, and it looked pathetically vulnerable swinging in the empty air between me and the Doctor. Something in the back of my mind started to scream, a soft yet piercing wail like the sound of a mosquito buzzing near my ear. As he approached and gently turned the watch over, I had to clench my fist to stop myself yanking it back and running very, very far away, the buzz growing louder now and decidedly more panicked.

"Is this yours?" he asked me, avoiding my eyes. I shook my head, watching his every move very carefully, just waiting for him to tell me it was okay to hide the watch once again. "Where did you get it?"

"It was my mother's," I almost growled, my hand shaking now with the effort of keeping the watch away from my protection. The Doctor met my eyes swiftly and his mouth fell open into a little 'o' of shock, an expression I would have found comical had my control not snapped. With a speed I didn't know I had, I looped the chain back around my neck and stuffed the watch down my shirt, where it came to rest just above my heart. Instantly, the wail and the panic stopped, and the Doctor's expression turned sympathetic.

"Do you have any idea what that is?" he asked.

I nodded stiffly. "The last memento I have of my mother's life," I replied curtly. "And I'd very much like to go home now, if that's okay." I turned on my heel, anxious to get as far away as possible, even though a part of me very much wanted to stay.

"Wait," the Doctor called, and I unconsciously obeyed. Just that one little word, softly called in an even tone, and I jumped like an eager puppy. I wondered briefly if there was something he'd done to me to cause that instantaneous reaction, but dismissed the notion as stupid. I _wanted _to wait, I'd _wanted _him to call me back. "I don't... I need to see your mother."

"You can't," I muttered, my heart clenching and thudding painfully. Thirteen years since the accident, and I still felt the pain like it was yesterday. "Unless you can talk to the dead, you can't." I hated the callous tone of my voice, and how I couldn't bring myself to turn around to face the Doctor, but the moment someone brought up my mother I fell to pieces. She'd been everything to me and losing her had... unsettled me somewhat.

The Doctor's hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed lightly. I shrugged him off and turned around, heaving a sigh and holding out my hands, silently giving him permission to question away. I could see the curiosity burning in his eyes and wanted this out of the way as quickly as possible. "The watch was hers," he stated, to my brief nod; "And after... you wear it to remember her. Did she ever tell you how she came to possess it?"

I shook my head. "She could never remember. She must've gone through something traumatic... she'd completely blocked all her memories from before she showed up at the Pullman Women's Shelter." The Doctor's eyebrows flew into his receding hairline and he muttered furiously to himself, pacing the ground as he puzzled something out. I shivered as a breeze struck up and remembered just why I'd wanted to go home. "Look, d'you mind if we hurry home? It's bloody freezing out here and there's a cup of tea waiting with my name on it," I interrupted his frantic pacing, gesturing to the empty road.

"Yeah, yeah of course," the Doctor nodded quickly, leading the way as though he knew where to go. I followed him with a slight grin, just waiting for him to turn around and ask for directions. "You're probably tired, too," he added, throwing the comment over his shoulder, sounding slightly smug. Most likely because he still managed to look as fresh as ever while I probably resembled Cousin It.

"Well," I smiled weakly, trying to inject a little life into myself. "I'm usually fast asleep at seven past five in the morning." He froze as I recited the time, a flyaway guess that I didn't think too deeply about. I took the lead then, as he stared at me like I'd gone and insulted his favourite band. If he had one. My overtired and therefore overactive brain didn't remain concentrating on that particular line of thought too long before it just hibernated, I guess, turning me into autopilot.

Since I wasn't being asked any more questions- or I might've been, I wasn't exactly aware- I figured myself safe to just walk, navigating my way home along the familiar route. This part of Cardiff seemed mostly unharmed, amazingly, and the closer I got to home the less carnage I saw. And my blessed front door, the most welcome sight in the universe, still intact and without a scratch. I let myself- and the Doctor- in, and went straight for the kettle and a cup of tea.

God, how weird that felt, just thinking about it and actually going through with it. Flicking the button on, I waited, only to find that the power was out. That, I think, was the final straw and I threw my hands up in the air before storming into the lounge room and flopping on the couch. The Doctor claimed an armchair nearby, neither of us speaking for the longest time. It felt like hours, but relentlessly the clock on the mantle ticked away and I counted thirty seconds before he broke the silence.

"Kia, I'm sorry, but I need to-" he cut himself off, taking a deep breath. I nodded my consent, much more comfortable now that I was inside and slightly warmer and on something soft and not inches away from death. Yeah, that last one definitely put a huge improvement in my mood. "Your mother... what was her name? Did she..." he trailed off, his tone thick as though he were struggling with tears. I could feel the arm across my eyes becoming damp with my own, and didn't look to see. "What was she like?"

"Alexandra," I said softly, answering his first question first, as it should be. I could never understand this business of reversing-order for answering a list of questions, and so always answered in the order they'd been asked. Frustrated my professor to no end, but I refused to change. "She was... wonderful. She raised me on her own, worked hard all her life- all the time I'd known her. I could tell her anything, she was my best friend... my mentor, my protector, my teacher... she told the most wonderful stories every night before I fell asleep- even when I didn't need her presence to fall asleep. She was _smart, _so brilliantly smart... she knew things others didn't, noticed the beauty in things others took for granted..." I waved my hand towards a painting on the mantle, a small landscape that Mum had painted when I was a kid. Red grass, burnt orange skies, silver leaves, golden mountains, and a city encased in a bubble. She had worn the most puzzled expression when it was done, and laughed at herself uncertainly... _Those stories must've worked into my painting..._

The Doctor's breathing became ragged at the sight of it and I heard him get up, to examine the picture more closely. "She drew this place," he stated, and I nodded without moving. "Did she name it?"

"Yeah," I replied quietly, hesitant to reveal something to him I'd never told anyone else. "Mum... she... she called it _home_."

* * *

**How are you all dealing with the weekly updates? Do you think they should be more often, or stay as they are? Personally, I like it being every Wednesday, because I'm working on the sequel and hope to continue the weekly updating thing until the entire series is finished. Whether that's in a year or in a couple months, it depends how long the spark burns for... Right, off to write more sequel!**


	7. Bedtime Story

Look out for the mega-AN at the bottom. This chapter is a little short, but the bedtime story is the focus here and will answer questions about Alexandra Pullman. Also, Kia meets the TARDIS!

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**Seven: Bedtime Story**

"She called it _what?"_

I sat up at the sharpness of his tone, his eyes darting between me and the picture. "Home," I said quietly, and for the first time I saw the Doctor crumble. He recoiled from the painting and returned to his armchair, his head in his hands. He was distraught, anguished- without knowing why, I moved to perch beside him, my hand settling on his shoulder after a moment of nervous fluttering. I realised that this was the first time I'd initiated contact between the two of us, when we were both conscious at least. "There's a story behind it," I murmured, and the Doctor tensed.

"Tell me," he demanded, voice ragged. Needing the distance, I returned to the couch and kept my eyes on Mum's colourful painting, calling up the memory of those nights when I'd be sitting up in bed, and she'd perch beside me. Then, as she stroked my forehead and smiled into the distance, her eyes not quite _here, _she'd start to speak, and I'd be captivated.

The story I knew so well, but I'd never shared it with anyone else... yet now, I wanted to. Something in the set of his shoulders said he _needed _to hear it, that there were things beyond my understanding at play here. He was fascinated by my necklace, for one thing, when nobody else even realised I was wearing one. The look on his face- stricken, shock, _hope- _when he'd seen it in the alley replayed in my mind and willed me to speak; closing my eyes, I began.

"_Once upon a time, on a planet half a universe away, there lived a little girl. This little girl wasn't like other little girls, you see, because of many things. The differences couldn't be seen on her face, but in her heart. Because this little girl didn't have just one heart, but two. Her mother said it was because she loved so terribly much that one heart could never handle all that love, so she needed two. The little girl wasn't alone, either, as all her family and her friends and her friends' families had two hearts, too, so that they could love each other and their home very, very much._

_Only they weren't supposed to. There were some people who lived in the city in the bubble, people who wanted everyone not to love. They wanted the people to fight, and to fight, the people mustn't love. The people from the city tried everything they could to stop the others from their feelings, to force them not to use their hearts, but the little girl and her family refused. They were clever and they knew that their love is what made them strong._

_But the little girl didn't need to worry about that, as she was still a little girl, and she had all the time in the world. She could dance upon the red grass and throw silver leaves to the burnt orange sky. She could sing to the wind and lie on the hills to feel the planet orbiting around the two suns. She had a happy childhood, full of love and beauty and happiness._

_One day, when the little girl was eight years old, she was taken to the city to go to school. She was frightened, because she didn't know anybody, but she was excited because she would finally be a grown-up. On her first day, she was shown her future, and it frightened her so badly that she ran away. She ran and she ran fast, but she never went too far away, coming back to learn more and more. She was always afraid, though, always watching and waiting for the day when she would have to go._

_While she was at school, she learned all sorts of fantastic things. Like how to fly a spaceship and how to speak different languages. She watched her older classmates graduate and fly out into the universe to explore, and she longed to join them. She learned how to feel time and how to understand space, how to see all that is, was, and could be. She learned to tell the difference between something that could change, and something that could not._

_She saw so many fantastic things, but while she was at school, she was lonely. She didn't make many friends, though she did have a few, and so she missed her family. She missed the mountains that she called home, and she wanted to go back. But despite her longing to return, she knew she had to stay at her school and learn all she could, because she knew that soon there would come a day when the school and the city and the mountains themselves would disappear._

_She had seen it happening when she was eight years old, and each time she was shown the universe and all the possibilities she could see the end coming nearer and nearer. It frightened her and she wanted to run, and sometimes she did. But they always found her, always brought her back and told her that she had nothing to worry about. But she knew, she could see it, she could feel it._

_Even though she worried about the future, she told herself not to dwell on it, and she found herself becoming closer to one of her classmates. Eventually, after they graduated, she married him and they planned to have children together of their own. They moved back to the mountains, to a house near her parents, and they lived there for the longest time._

_The little girl was not so little anymore, though she still felt like a child when she thought of her future, which was closer than ever. When she found out she was expecting her baby, she knew the time to run was then. She had to escape her beautiful homeland before it was gone forever, because there was a shadow coming that only disappearing could stop. So, in the dead of night, the little girl who was all grown up snuck away and stole a spaceship, running away into the stars with her baby safe in her tummy. _

_She knew she needed to find somewhere safe, somewhere she could keep her baby, and so she came to Earth, where her favourite story had come from. She fell in love with the people, and she came to love Earth as much as she loved her own home. Though she would never see her mother or her father or her husband or her friends again, and though she hurt, she ran for so long that eventually she almost forgot them. They became dreams, shadows, and she became a mother... and she lived happily ever after..."_

I opened my eyes, smiling. The story wasn't exactly a totally happy one, and probably not one a normal child would enjoy hearing, but it had inspired me to dream of travelling through the stars like the little girl had. As I grew up, I began to see the similarities between the story and what I assumed of Mum's life; _she _was the little girl, and had run away from her home. She'd had a North London accent... I always assumed she went through something horrible and run away to keep me safe. I knew that the 'other planet' she spoke of was England, and her imagination had painted it in vivid, fiery colours. A psychiatrist's field day.

Now that I'd spoken it aloud for the first time, on my own, I realised just how plausible the possibility of it actually being another planet was. But that... that would mean _I _was a secret alien? Which was ridiculous, as I was born on Earth, had the certificate and everything. But after everything I'd seen with the Cybermen, and the Doctor's two hearts- still not convinced _that _was real- this business of aliens seemed all to shockingly real. Could Mum have been... no. No... utterly ridiculous.

"It's just a story," I shrugged, thinking nothing of it. A nice story, in parts, a story that meant the world to me- but that's all it was. A bedtime story to get me to sleep, and to inspire my dreams.

"No, it isn't." The Doctor stood by the painting again, his eyes half closed and his cheeks wet. I didn't say a word as he blinked away his tears, and without a word he left my flat. I heard the front door close sharply with a dejected click, and couldn't help but think I'd done something wrong. Sighing, I stood to drag myself to bed, figuring I might as well start recuperating from my _epic _night. Every cell in my body ached for sleep, and just as I'd entered the bedroom with my shirt halfway to being off, I heard it.

A whooshing noise, halfway between metallic screeching and gears grinding. I froze, a smile pulling on my lips; I remembered that sound, though I'd only heard it once before. Yanking my shirt back down, I spun out of the bedroom into the short hallway that ran from the front door through to my bedroom, and felt the breeze that blew from the bathroom door. Sure enough, before my very eyes, the blue box materialised- conveniently blocking my bathroom- and out stepped the Doctor.

"We meet again," I smiled, surprised at how happy I was with his reappearance. He returned it, still ruffled but seeming so much more in control now that he'd had time away. I wondered how he'd gotten from here to the box so quickly, because even at a full run I knew it took at least fifteen minutes. He'd made it in what, three? If that. Perhaps it travelled in time, too, though it looked pretty small for a time machine.

He ducked back inside and I inched forward to peek, just to have on brief look. No matter how tired I was, my curiosity won out, and my feet propelled me down the hall. One step at a time, half nervous and half eager to just throw caution to the wind and _run, _but I'd had quite enough of that lately, thank you, and so I inched my way along. I could hear the Doctor- or someone- moving around, things crashing to the floor and clattering together, as the door was still slightly ajar.

As I came within a foot, I could smell it; tea. A cup of hot, wonderful tea, and that alone made me dash the last few paces into the box, searching for the tea like a hound for a fox. It took my addled brain all of three seconds to snap into gear and I froze, staring around at what should have been a very tight squeeze. The Doctor, noticing me for the first time, gave me a smug smile and flung his arms wide.

"Welcome to the TARDIS!"

I blinked, not sure what it was he'd just said- it wasn't English, that's for sure, he was just saying _things-_, and my jaw dropped. "Oh my God," I whispered.

* * *

**Bit of a drama getting this one to you, despite having all the chapters nicely written and edited and stored. You see, I am a Grade A idiot and had exactly one- that's right, **_**one- **_**copy of "Changing Me" stored anywhere, and that was on a USB stick.**

**No, I didn't lose it.**

**The USB port on my computer has almost burnt out, which meant I had about 5 seconds in which the device was active, but only if I held it in and up at a slight angle. If I moved, or let go, it would disconnect and I'd lose everything. For a while there, the USB would register as "FAT" (yes, I laughed too) rather than "REMOVABLE DISK". In this case, there were no accessible files AT ALL on the storage device, which gave me a mild/major panic attack. Seeing as this is chapter seven of nineteen, it would be catastrophic to lose the remainder now.**

**But, drama solved, and there's now about seven backups in existence on USB, hard drive and even iPod. And you have a new chapter, so enjoy it, and leave a comment if you drop by! To the small group who have reviewed chapters 1-6, you guys are fantastic, absolutely **_**fantastic**_**!**

**x MS**

**P.S. Next update will be Wednesday 12****th**** July. **

**P.P.S. How would you guys feel about having a little 'teaser' section down here, like the first paragraph/parts of the next chapter?**


	8. Impossible Blue Box

**First off, I AM SO SORRY! I'd like to entirely blame some external factor but it seems that it's my own intelligence level that's failed me, AGAIN. I've had the flu (so, I will blame an external factor) and it's really, really kicked me around, so instead of uploading Chapter Eight, I re-uploaded a slightly tweaked version of Chapter One. What. Da. Fuq. Anyway, so utterly, irrevocably sorry for that error, and here's the REAL chapter eight- thank you to those who pointed it out, I would've gone to bed tonight thinking everything's fine... typical me.**

**...**

**Finally, Kia's in the TARDIS. When I started writing this story, I was looking forward to this part the most. The moment the companion meets the TARDIS is my favourite part of ANY fanfiction to be honest.**

**So enjoy!**

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**Eight: Impossible Blue Box**

The Doctor watched me, bouncing lightly on his heels as I stepped back outside, measuring the box's perimeter mentally, before pushing through the doors once more and feeling my jaw drop again. His smile grew as my wonder increased, taking baby steps further into the room and gazing around. The walls rose in gentle slopes, creating a cavernous dome decorated with a coral-like pattern. Beams resembling tree trunks supported this dome in four specific places, no one like the other. Right in front of me was a set of four stairs leading to an expanse of metal grating covering the majority of the ground, while in the very centre stood a masterpiece of absolute beauty and wonder. It resembled the clapper of a bell, though I was sure it was fixed to the spot, and the broadest bit held a myriad of colours and shapes, all of them apparently doing something. The column rising from the centre was translucent and glowing a pale blue, contrasting beautifully with the yellowish hue on the walls.

"It's..." I trailed off, and he looked at me expectantly, eyes glowing with anticipation. "Beautiful," I finished, and his expression fell. Giggling slightly at the disappointment etched in the furrow between his brows, I cautiously stepped ever closer and gingerly ran my hand over the tree-trunk beams; to my surprise, they were neither wood nor metal, but a sort of mix between them... like... sandpaper, but smoother... like touching new sand, or putting your hand in a bowl of fine sugar.

"Is that _all _you've got to say?" he asked me huffily, arms folded and one eyebrow raised to the roof. His smile was halfway formed though, so whatever annoyance was in his tone I knocked aside with a wave of my hand; which only served to make his grin grow wider. "You didn't notice, say, that it's-"

"Bigger on the inside?" I finished dryly, and his entire expression changed. I was gifted with a broad grin and- Good Lord, was that a _giggle? _"Yeah, but that's the obvious bit, isn't it?" Nodding, he turned to the console and petted it fondly, moving around and pressing various buttons. I felt the ground beneath me tilt and lurched to grab a railing, my feet slipping out from under me. The doors snapped shut and the Doctor gave me a grin, while I regained my balance and glared at him. "What did you do?" I demanded.

"Shut the door," he replied innocently. "There was a draft." There wasn't, because if there had been, it would have been me who felt it. Not him. I raised both my eyebrows- somewhat impressed that my face didn't tic as I did so- and headed up the gangway to join him near the blue, glowing column; which had me more mesmerised than anything else, if I was totally honest.

"You'd better not be whisking me off, you," I muttered, still transfixed on the totally still device; on closer inspection, I could see pistons inside it, though what they powered I had no idea.

"Who, me?" he scoffed indignantly, all schoolboy cheekiness and innocent, toothy grins. "I'm not _whisking _you anywhere. Just a cup of tea," he gestured behind him to a small table I hadn't even noticed before. There sat the source of the tea, the pot still steaming and the two mugs set out on either side. The Doctor filled them both and beckoned for me to join him at the table- it was a little plastic fold-out one, and I wondered again how he'd had time to do all this, when he'd only left me for a few minutes.

"It travels in time, doesn't it?" I asked, feeling immensely guilty for asking just as he sipped his tea, as his resulting gasp caused him to inhale the liquid and start coughing on it. Stunned, I moved on autopilot to tap his back, until he regained control and whirled around to look at me. I must have been becoming used to his rapidly changing emotions, as I didn't even flinch at the demanding glint in his eyes.

"How on Earth could you _possibly _know that?"

I shrugged, returning to my seat. I yawned widely and tried not to blink too much, sure that I'd fall asleep if I closed my eyes for even a second. I was just as convinced that all of this- the impossible blue box, the Doctor himself, was a dream... though a dream had never made me feel quite so _alive_ before. My dreams had always been vivid, but never like this. "It took us twenty minutes to walk here from the... Tad...Tar...Tar-?"

"TARDIS," he corrected quietly, smiling to himself. "Time And Relative Dimenson In Space." I snickered to myself, and he glared at me in mock anger, his chest puffing out even as he struggled not to smile. "Don't laugh! If you make the TARDIS angry, she'll make me kick you off."

I rolled my eyes. "Sorry," I apologised, feeling like a loon as I addressed the wall. "I'm not laughing at the… _T-A-R-D-I-S_. I'm laughing at the fact that acronyms generally don't capitalise or include the conjunctions."

"Maybe not on Earth," he retorted, haughtily staring down his nose at me like I'd offended him in some major, life-altering way. Still, I caught the twitch of his lips and knew he was having me on... testing me, almost, daring me to challenge him because he had an answer for everything. Right then, I decided to make it my mission to render him speechless, even if it took until the end of time to accomplish. "But out there," he pointed up, "there are things beyond your wildest dreams. Whatever your government might tell you, Earth are not the biggest fish in the pond. There _are _others out there, waiting, watching- walking among you, sometimes. And just sometimes, they try something-"

"Like today," I murmured, knowing that while the Cybermen were technically human... they were still alien to us, to what technology out there was today. Nothing in even the most advanced laboratories could take a human brain and encase it in a working, fully-functional metal _shell._

The Doctor made a face and shrugged. "And more. Half of them you probably wouldn't remember... it's only recently that Earth's truly come under fire. For such a little planet, you're so _loud..."_

"Doctor," I shook my head, "You keep saying 'you're'… like you're..."

He held up a hand and placed it against his heart, drawing my attention to that and my memory to what I'd heard in the Cyber-Building. That double set, the echo... "You heard it," he whispered, and I nodded, swallowing thickly. If I could handle Cybermen, I could handle the Doctor. He looked human enough, anyway, so I could simply ignore that extra- wait, _what? _Internally kicking myself for even _thinking _of pretending he was human, I was abruptly aware of the Doctor giving me a concerned, slightly hurt, stare, and realised that some of my self-horror must have shown on my face.

"Well," I cleared my throat, and pointed at the centre of the TARDIS. Conjunctions capitalised. "That would explain the time travel, and the box-from-nowhere."

His grin lit up his entire face, and he instantly started rambling on about this planet and that, sounding glad to have someone to talk to. I tried to be attentive, I really did, but the tea was working wonders on my frazzled synapses and soon, his animated voice turned into a soft hum in the back of my mind. My eyes closed, I nodded and hummed where I thought necessary, pretending to listen even when my thoughts were... well, pretty much utterly blank. Strangely enough, I didn't want to leave, as much as I wanted to sleep. I wanted to stay and listen to the Doctor talk forever, if he'd let me. I wanted to see the planet that had a blue moon every night, the planet in constant sunlight with the sapphire waterfalls, the inverted planet where the sky was the land and the land was the sky, and the mountains that swayed in the breeze...

I pictured myself standing under the blue moon, holding out my hand to watch my skin glow. I was alone in a field of grass, though I couldn't tell what colour _that _was. The breeze rustled against my legs and I smiled as it brushed my hair off my neck, cool and slightly chilly, but smelling of frangipanis and vanilla… I turned around and everything was bright, as I stepped through a glass-domed room and peered up at the sky. It would burn me in seconds if the glass was gone, and the thought scared me momentarily, but I knew I was safe… and then I was in a bus, a little metal tube with the Doctor next to me- still prattling on- as we headed out to see the sapphire waterfalls… I turned to look out the window, and found myself standing at the edge of a cliff, though when I looked up all I could see was grass and trees, and below me was sky and clouds… in the far distance, mountains swayed and I wondered how hard it would be to climb them. I tried walking on the sky and found it miraculously solid, my confidence rising with each step I took. I glanced up again and the scene changed once more, to burnt-orange skies and red grass, with silver-topped mountains and the Doctor, smiling at me as he stepped aside to reveal the city in a bubble, golden and glowing under the twin suns, and my mother, holding out her hand…

"Kia?" I hummed and jerked awake, my head suddenly shooting up from drooling on my shoulder to staring around in shock. Still in the TARDIS, I noticed, and after just ten minutes of sleep I was feeling... more alert. Still tired, but alert. Almost. The Doctor smiled sadly at me and I wondered how long he'd known I wasn't quite listening; guiltily, I glanced at the door and shrugged slightly.

"I should..." I trailed off to clear my throat, the volume and hoarseness showing through. I hadn't been out that long, had I? "Sleep."

"Yeah." He nodded, and I stood to head towards the door, almost tripping as a yawn narrowed my eyes and blurred my vision. Lucky for me, the Doctor steadied me and escorted me to my bedroom door, which was all of six steps away. As he stood there and I faced him, a chilling thought crossed my mind and I glanced at the open doors of the TARDIS, my chest tightening at the possibility of losing what I'd just found. "I'll be here when you wake up," the Doctor murmured, rolling his eyes at me and gently shoving me towards the bed.

"Good... 'cause I've got questions for you, Martian," I said wryly, shaking my finger at him. He bit his lip in annoyance.

"Not from Mars, for Gods' sake... Right, sleep tight, Kia!" And with that, he was gone and I fell onto my bed. Honestly, the hordes of Ghengis Khan could've marched through my hallway and I wouldn't have noticed; a testament to how tiring running for your life could be. All I could recall that day was the sound of the Doctor's voice, his stories worming their way into my head, my mother's voice whispering in my ear that maybe, just maybe...

_It could all be true._

* * *

_**This, and the next chapter, will be sort of short, "filler" chapters, before the beginning of a true Original Adventure arc, with an old, mostly unknown enemy that hasn't been seen on the New Series. I will probably be incorperating several pieces of Classic information as well as new, because my first Doctor was Tom Baker, when I was five years old. Bear with me, things will speed up very soon.**_

_Next Update: 18th July._

**Okay, so instead of 'spoilers' I've decided to put a little blog-piece down here on the production(?) of Changing Me. I haven't done it before on previous chapters, but will do a little bit from now on. **

The first half of this chapter was actually the first piece of Kia's adventure I wrote, way back in November last year. Back then, she wasn't named, she didn't have a story, she was just a girl walking onto the TARDIS for the first time. Later, I was listening to the TV and heard the name "Kia", like the car company, thought oh, that's pretty! Thus, she had a name. Then, I heard Katie Melua's quirky style, in particular her song Thank You Stars, and thus Kia had a face. I've never written stories chronologically; I start in the middle, I write the ending, then I flesh out the inbetween bits; I've got little snapshots with 10/Kia and 11/Kia, all ready to go. I've even got 4/5/8/Kia, for a fun arc I'm planning in the future. It's strange, really, the way I write. **Does anyone else do the same thing?**


	9. Pancakes and Tea

**Nine: Pancakes and Tea**

I've never been terribly coherent in the morning, not before the first coffee at least. That's probably the reason that, at first, I didn't notice my hallway being suspiciously empty of Police Box as I stumbled to the bathroom to plonk myself in the shower. It's also probably why it took me ten minutes to work out why I was so sore all over, and why I'd even managed to sleep through seven phone calls and my alarm- _twice, _I noticed, with a jolt of shock. I'd somehow slept through an _entire day_. When it finally hit me, I was thankful that I was already sitting down under the water, letting my hair hang limply around my face as the hot liquid dripped off the end of my nose, and I tried to count the scratches on my foot from kicking in glass.

Exhaustion and adrenaline, I had now discovered, worked better than morphine. Though I could honestly fall in love with a bottle of Valium… through the hissing of the shower, and the I-swear-it's-audible groan of my protesting body, I heard the phone start to ring and hurried to finish washing my hair, my body, and allowing the heat of the water to cut right through the fog in my brain. Not that it did much good, and when I emerged half an hour later wrapped in a fluffy towel, I wandered into the lounge and pressed _play _on the messages.

_Kia! Ohmigosh, are you alright? We've just heard that the attacks were concentrated in the UK… _I deleted it, Angie's chipper and terrified voice too much for me to handle this early in the… afternoon. I'd call her back later, preferably after food and coffee. The next five messages were all the same, Angie ringing in varying degrees of panic, ranging from _No news is good news _to _should I be planning a funeral? _Laughing at my best-mate-slash-only-friend's concern, quietly touched, I patiently waited for the final messages to play… school. Telling me that, in light of recent events, my classes had been cancelled for the next week, and work, telling me that I no longer had a job as the building was gone.

"How thoughtful," I murmured, smiling in barely concealed delight as I realised this now meant I had time to complete my essay _and, _I thought with more excitement, talk to the Doctor. His wonderful stories had given me the best night's sleep ever, though I couldn't remember the dreams exactly, I knew they had to be fantastic. I almost didn't need the coffee, with the energy the thought of him burst through my veins. I headed for the kitchen anyway, out of pure habit and a rumbling stomach, and froze in the doorway as a cold realisation swept over me.

"Oh no," I spoke aloud, turning on my heel and dashing back to the hallway to stare in unrestrained _horror _at the empty hallway. No police box, no TARDIS, no Doctor. "But…" I trailed off, recalling his seemingly-sincere-but-obviously-not promise that he'd stay. I'd believed him too, and the crushing blow from my hopes falling to the ground settled in my stomach and put me in a foul old mood. Should I have known better than to trust him, even if he had saved my life? Probably. _Did _I trust the churning in my stomach when I'd allowed myself to trust? No.

My own fault, then, I reasoned. Didn't do much to alleviate the disappointment I felt, but hey… life goes on. Can't spend it waiting for an alien in an impossible blue box, no matter _how _hard I wished I'd see him again. Forcibly shoving the Doctor and the TARDIS and even the Cybermen out of my head, I quickly dressed and headed for the kitchen and set about making the ultimate comfort food.

Delicious, golden, lemon-and-sugar covered pancakes.

The rhythmic adding of ingredients, stirring, pouring, whisking, frying, flipping and finally stacking kept my thoughts blessedly quiet as I concentrated on making the best damned pancakes I've ever made in my entire life. I probably made enough to feed an entire family of five, not that it bothered me. They'd probably taste just the same after twenty seconds in the microwave later on, for my next meal. Satisfied that I'd made enough- and was out of milk- I grabbed four of the best and padded through to the lounge, flopping on the couch to stare blankly at the telly.

Unbidden and certainly unwanted, my thoughts drifted to the Doctor. I wondered where he was, how he was, whether he was fighting someone else or lounging on a distant, sunbaked planet. The miserable weather outside only dampened my spirits more and I tried to think of something positive, which only lead to me reliving the last twenty-something hours in my head. The mysterious girl in the library, her promises that the Doctor would be the best thing to ever happen- he had, technically, but now he'd _gone _I was miserably bored- and the TARDIS appearing from nowhere.

"TARDIS," I said aloud, feeling the word out on my tongue and liking the way it sounded. I felt a small jump on my chest and glanced down, unsurprised that Mum's old fob watch that served as my necklace was warm against my skin. It always was, no matter how long it sat on the table alone. The Doctor had taken an interest in it too, I remembered, and set my empty plate beside me as I slipped the chain off from around my neck, feeling a sense of emptiness creep up my spine. "I met an alien," I told it, feeling stupid but somewhat better, "named the Doctor. We beat the Cybermen. He said he'd stay, but-"

"Kia?"

I jumped and nearly dropped the watch, fumbling to shove the chain back over my head. Somebody was knocking on the door and I ran to answer it, recognising the voice simply by the way my heart leapt at the sound. Flinging it open, I came face-to-face with the Doctor, fighting off a grin at the sight of him. He smiled awkwardly and stepped aside so I could see the TARDIS, looking innocent and much more at home sitting next to an _actual _telephone booth.

"Have I been gone long?" he asked anxiously, and I folded my arms across my chest, hoping that my body language would pass for _pissed _when really, all I felt was relief.

"Dunno. I woke up just now and you'd gone. Didn't even notice at first," I admitted sheepishly, rubbing a hand against the back of my neck. The affronted look I received in return only made me grin as I stepped aside, nodding him in. "I made pancakes," I offered, pointing to the kitchen as I shut the door and headed for my plate, intending to wash it up. The Doctor sat at the table and stared at the food, clearly not hearing the invitation in my tone until I nodded at the food and shoved the plate under his nose.

By time I'd finished washing my plate, he'd finished the rest of my feast-sized stack, and I rolled my eyes as I finished the washing up. "I wasn't sure when you'd be awake," he spoke finally, leaning back in his chair as I sat on the one next to him, shrugging to show it didn't matter. He hadn't gone far, I realised, only left to give me my flat back.

"It's alright," I replied, unable to fight the grin that rose now. "Bet you were pretty tired, huh?"

"Nah," he scoffed offhandedly, waving away my concern with a lazy grin. "Don't need much sleep, me."

I nodded slowly, scuffing my feet as a question burned in my mind. I tried to fight it down, a blush creeping up at how rude it sounded, but my mouth worked in sneaky ways and managed to utter it out before my brain could leap into control. "What are you?" I blurted, instantly covering my mouth at the sheer _shock _of hearing the question voiced. "I- I mean, it's not every day I meet an a-alien, and… yeah," I trailed off weakly, trying to show how apologetic I was without saying it.

The Doctor, to my surprise, laughed and shook his head at me. "It's alright- natural you're curious. I am a Time Lord." His tone turned slightly dark at that and just the look on his face- gathering storm clouds, anger and rage and grief and _loss _entwined so fragilely- I was afraid to question him any further, lest I break the dam he had on those warring emotions. A moment of tense silence passed before he shuddered and forced his expression to clear, smiling at me in a way that didn't meet his eyes. "Kia, I was wondering. Since you saved my life last night- would you like to join me in the TARDIS?"

I froze, staring at him with a gaping mouth. And then, before I knew what I was doing, I launched out of my chair and hugged him around the neck, silently thanking him a million times for the offer. After a moment, he hugged me back and I thought I felt him smile against my shoulder.

* * *

**Hello again, my freaky darlings!**

How are we all this week? This is yet another 'filler' chapter, but the next one marks the start of the original adventure arc, which should wrap up in about ten more chapters, which means ten weeks left of "Changing Me"! Now, while we're here, there is one extremely wonderful fellow author I have to give a shout-out to, not only for being a loyal follower of this story but for making **a YouTube trailer for me! **I logged on a few days ago to a PM from "**BlueEyedDreamer97**", who informed me that she'd made a trailer, among many, many wonderful compliments which made me giddy for hours. The link to watch the trailer, if you're interested, is:

watch?v=zddIaioJdCw&list= PL2460C7618D5E9966&index= 6&feature=plpp_video

Just add "www. youtube. com" and to the beginning and REMOVE SPACES, because that's the best way I found of adding external links in stories. Otherwise, visit my profile as it's up there as well. Thanks!

Please go check it out, it's great. Also, you get to see the woman I picture as Kia, **Katie Melua. **

**So, **yet again, THANK YOU SO MUCH, **BlueEyedDreamer97!**

Right, so, there isn't much else to say this evening except I hope you enjoyed the last of the 'fillers'; let me know what you thought in a **review :)**.

Next update will be 25th July.


	10. History Comes Alive

**Ten: History Comes Alive**

Twenty minutes is all I took to run from the kitchen to my room, grab a change of clothes _just in case, _brush my teeth and hair,and run back to the kitchen, where the Doctor waited for me. With shining eyes, I breathlessly announced that I was ready. By the smirk on his face, I could see he very much doubted it, but went along anyway, coddling me all the way to the TARDIS with anecdotes of this and of that, telling me of the dangers I'd likely face and certain things I was not allowed to do- wander off, interrupt, mock him, wander off, touch the TARDIS, interfere with time, wander off, steal the sonic screwdriver, use a gun and wander off. Did I mention I wandering off? Not allowed to do that.

"Where'd the Cybermen go?" I asked quietly as we crossed the street. There hadn't been many fallen in my neighbourhood, but there were one or two at the end of the road, already cleared away. I didn't ask out of concern for them- I knew they were dead and gone, but shouldn't there have been something left behind? Some shard of metal, a severed hand? The Doctor's eyes darkened as he shrugged, his eyes never leaving the TARDIS doors.

"Probably cleared away to be dissected." I didn't dare ask anything further, figuring it would be a touchy subject for an alien to discuss. My stomach rolled in my gut and I forced it down at the sight of a blue police box standing innocently under an unlit streetlamp, just waiting for us. All of a sudden, I couldn't wait to get inside and stood, hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation as the Doctor took his sweet-bloody-time unlocking, and opening, the door.

Once inside, I felt that same sense of awe and amazement washing over me as it had the last time I'd entered, only this time it was _so much better _as I was awake enough to enjoy it. The coral-like décor still caught my eye and I gingerly touched the walls, jerking back when the hummed and buzzed against my hand. The Doctor was watching me carefully as I explored every inch of the control room before finally joining him up on the metal grating near the console. I tried to count the buttons, but lost count after fifty-three. His hands were braced on a keyboard with writing I couldn't distinguish, and didn't care to try. I'd just give myself a headache if I didn't control myself; I'd never been one to let something rest, and would doggedly wear away at it until I had my answers. For example, when I was ten, some bright spark gave me a Rubik's cube and six months later, Mum had tossed it forty-seven times, sick of my moaning about it. And each time I'd snuck out of bed and retrieved it, hiding it in all sorts of places until I'd finally solved the damned thing. And then tossed it.

Off a bridge.

"You're all on your own in here?" I asked, only half-oblivious to his flinch and cringe as I circled the console, admiring it's beauty and complexity. I'd always been a bit of a computer-fan, but this definitely took the cake. I wanted to know what everything did, whether it all did _something, _and how he remembered everything. I caught the Doctor nodding in reply to my question, and felt my brows pinch lightly together in a tiny frown. I ducked under one of the tree-branch columns, eying the leather-bound man in front of me. "Doesn't it get lonely?"

He paused for a moment, fingers ghosting over the controls. "From time to time," he replied evenly, his tone barely changing. My frown cleared as I joined him near the controls, leaning backwards against the cool metal console. He glanced over, blue eyes unreadable. "It always seems so much better through someone else's eyes."

I felt a shudder rising, but pushed it down again; the tone of his voice gave away much more than his expression did. "So, where are we going?" I asked carefully, diffusing the tension as he grinned and pulled a lever. The doors snapped shut and while I jumped just like last time, the tingle in my spine was definitely excitement this time.

"Beginner's choice," he said quietly, catching my gaze as I glanced over to see his cheeky-schoolboy smile back in full-force. Whatever melancholy had stolen upon the room was quickly seeping away, replaced by a sort of manic energy. "Anywhere in time and space, Kia. Everything that ever was, is or could be, right at your fingertips…"

The sheer magnitude of what was indeed spread before me for the taking overwhelmed my brain and I couldn't think, couldn't decide. I briefly thought of going to the future but decided that my interests lay more firmly in the past; oh, the people I could meet, the things I could see… Pompeii, before the volcano… the Mayans… the Incans… the first human being… in a flash, the essay I was supposed to be writing for class entered my brain- no idea _why _school deemed itself important right then- and I knew. "I'm studying the development of mankind," I whispered, wondering for the first time whether I was actually about to Time Travel. It seemed impossible, and yet… so believable. "I've often wondered… Charles Darwin…"

"Alright, then," the Doctor smiled, locking his eyes with mine. "Off to meet Charlie it is."

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't help the joy that rose as the Doctor spun around the console, locked in a kind of dancing ballet that only he knew the steps to. I got out of the way, perching on the jump seat, and watched, transfixed, as he pushed this, pulled that, switched that, kicked this and grabbed a hammer to stop something flashing. His face was a mask of concentration, slightly drawn brows and pinched lips, but his movements were graceful, an age-old dance I almost felt out of place witnessing.

It was only when the TARDIS began wheezing and groaning- that beautiful sound I'd committed to memory from the first moment I heard it- that I realised we were landing. I leapt to my feet and ran to the doors, bouncing on my heels until something gave a _thud _and the Doctor joined me, grabbing the jacket he'd tossed off in his frantic piloting. "Always that hectic?" I asked, nodding to the console and picking myself up, feeling my rattled bones give little groans of protest as my mind sympathised, my entire body quite thoroughly shaken up. James Bond should've asked the Doctor to make his drinks.

"Designed for six people," he shrugged. "Can only do so much with two hands." Shrugging in acceptance, I pushed open the door and stumbled back at the blast of cold that hurried in. Tugging my jacket closer around me, I stepped out into a full-on blizzard, staring around at the gas lamps lining the street, and the complete lack of cars. There were houses all around, and not one of them had a vehicle I could see, but a suspicious pile of brown a few feet away gave off a tell-tale stench that hinted at the mode of transport. "England, Kent, in the year of Eighteen-Twenty-Nine. February Twelve, if I'm not mistaken-"

"You aren't," I murmured, noticing the nearest house had lights burning and a party going at full swing. A banner above the door read clearly, even through the snow and darkness, _Happy Birthday Charles. _"He's twenty, today," I pointed out, and the Doctor gave me an innocent smile.

"And apparently, quite a dab hand with the ladies. Least he was when I went to his book signing for _Origins of Species." _I stared, open-mouthed, at my companion and he winked back at me. "If you want, there's a wardrobe on the TARDIS. We could go," the Doctor nodded at the house and the party, and if I hadn't been dying of excitement I would have fainted with joy right then and there. I made a mental note that I ought to ask the Doctor when- and why- he'd met Charles Darwin before.

"Seriously?" I squeaked, overjoyed and delighted at the thought. "Yes, yes, _yes!" _I bolted back into the ship, the Doctor shouting directions at me as I ran down the halls. I found his verbal mapping completely incorrect, as the first random door I opened contained the wardrobe. Almost as if my wishing to get there faster had made the room easier to locate… I didn't dwell on anything but finding a dress, skipping the corset since I already felt poncy enough. Leaving my hair loose but for a beaded headband, I raced back to the front door as fast as my skirts would allow.

"This," the Doctor said, eying me up and down until I squirmed and blushed lightly, "is even faster than you moved while running for your life. I'll remember that- bribes work better than threats."

"Har-har," I muttered sarcastically, taking in the leather jacket and black jeans and combat boots. Definitely not the attire one wore to a party in 1829. "Aren't you going to change?"

"Nah," he said dismissively, shutting the TARDIS doors behind me and causing me to step out into the snow once again. "Bowties make me itch, and I hate suits." For all his gruff manner, he did offer me his arm and we walked as one to the front door of Charles Darwin's birthday party. Dear Lord, I thought I was going to _faint. _As we approached the door, a man in a tuxedo and top hat spilled out into the snow, laughing uncontrollably with a bottle of gin in his hands.

"Walk it off, Charlie!" a woman's voice shouted, and I turned to face the drunken bloke- who turned out to be none other than my hero, Charles Bloody Darwin. The phrase 'never meet your heroes' drifted through my mind, though to be honest I was in too much shock to take it seriously. I mean, _Charles Darwin! _The man is practically the focal point of my _entire semester _back home! "Don't come back until you're halfway sober, neither!" The woman shouted in the doorway. She was pretty with dark brown hair, her hands on her hips, and I recognised her vaguely as Emma Wedgwood… his future wife- and his cousin. I looked between the two and saw the sizzling hatred, wondering just how they turned that into a love that spanned the rest of their lives. "You'll be getting none of Ma's cake if you even _think _about gettin' in here pie-eyed!" Emma shouted once more, grabbing a broom to sweep the drunk naturalist off the footpath.

He stood and looked at me and the Doctor, standing with amused expressions and waiting to be noticed. Charles stepped forward and took my hand, bending to kiss the back of my knuckles but wobbling precariously and nearly falling on his arse. "Careful, Charlie," I grinned, "Don't hurt yourself." I couldn't believe it. Could not bloody believe it; I meet my all-time hero, my one idol, and he's completely pickled. Oh, but what an experience!

Darwin straightened and glared at us both through bleary eyes, clearly trying to put faces to names. He took a breath to speak and, to my amusement, fell flat on his back before he could say a word. Emma Wedgwood swooped down and tried to lift him, the Doctor and I helping her a moment later. I could barely contain my laughter as we hauled him into the house and up the stairs, dodging the criticising eyes of the rest of the party.

"Thanks, the both of yah," Emma addressed us as she tucked her cousin/future husband into his bed. "He's a good bloke, usually. Gets a bit carried away when there's gin involved, unfortunately."

"I don't remember reading that," I murmured before I could stop myself, though luckily Emma didn't seem to hear. The Doctor, however, did, and squeezed my arm lightly in warning. Shaking off my thoughts, I held out my hand to introduce myself. "I'm Kia Pullman," I declared, as Emma shook my hand. "And this is the Doctor." He kissed Emma's hand, as was polite to do, and I felt a strange tug in my stomach that felt vaguely like jealousy.

"Emma Wedgwood," said Emma Wedgwood, as if I wouldn't know who she was. "Cousin to the drunken lout and guest of honour. Sadly, they're the same person…"

I laughed appropriately and followed Emma back down to the party. The Doctor caught my elbow at the foot of the stairs and drew me close. "Watch your words and don't leave the house. Try not to change history too much… I'll be around- we'll head out around midnight." And just like that, he was gone. Four hours and six minutes, I thought, as I found a grandfather clock quickly to confirm my guess. I was hardly surprised when it read exactly, thinking that perhaps I'd seen it without really registering it. The subconscious was a funny thing at times.

Emma had disappeared through the crowd and I wandered, mingling in with the women and trying not to gush at how everything was so fantastically _fantastic. _I could barely believe we were in the eighteen hundreds, nor that I'd just met Charles Darwin and put him to bed, or that I was now being offered a small glass of scotch by a jolly, red-faced woman who introduced herself as Caroline. I struggled to make a connection between her and my history books, her identity coming to me in a flash of illumination; Charles' older sister. As instantly as the connection sprang up, all the information I'd ever read about her followed, pouring into my brain until I could barely hear what she was saying. Shaking it off, I smiled politely and moved on, sipping the scotch and wincing at the bitter taste. I definitely was not a scotch person... mixed with coke, maybe, but not on the rocks as they were drinking it.

Trying not to think about it too much, I sipped the scotch and, having very little drinking experience, soon found that it went pretty much straight to my head. Soon I was dancing the night away with a handsome man vaguely similar appearance-wise to Charles Darwin. My tangled brain supplied his name- _Erasmus- _but it didn't honestly matter. He was a fantastic dancer, and I couldn't stop laughing as he twirled me under his arm during what was supposed to be a slow, romantic waltz. He was as plastered as his brother, though remarkably more steady on his feet, which was a blessing for me as my own couldn't quite master the art of walking straight though I tried.

As the song drew to a close, my eyes found the Doctor watching me from the sidelines. The sight of him sent the alcohol rushing out of my system as the realisation of the time sank in; time to go. Erasmus pulled me in again and I slowed our frantic dance to a stop, a hand on his chest and my face flushed with joy. "I do declare," I announced, putting on a posh accent just for show. "I have had a marvellous time… but now, now I must depart… my chariot awaits!" With that, I spun on my heels and gracefully landed on my backside, giggling madly as Erasmus offered me his hand and we somehow worked together to bring me back to my feet. "Hey," I murmured, awfully close to the man, who held me as if he'd fall without the little support I offered. "Hey, I'm _absolutely _pickled tink... I mean tippled pink... _darn, _I mean..." I trailed off, hopelessly lost for words. Wasn't there something that went together, a colour and a sensation, that didn't literally mean what it said and instead meant terribly pleased... what _was _that dratted phrase?

Yeah, okay, so maybe the alcohol hadn't left me entirely. Erasmus, however, was far beyond the point of coherence and his hand wrapped around the back of my neck as he pulled me in for a steamy, bruising kiss. I stood frozen until Erasmus leaned back and toppled over himself to land on the couch behind him. A sense of dread curled in my stomach as I looked around… the Doctor was gone.

I tell you what, if I wasn't sober before I sure as _heck _was now. He wouldn't have left, would he?

"Oh, shit."

* * *

**Ha haa! Yes, dear Kia has gotten herself into a bit of a tickle. I mean pickle. That was probably my favourite sequence of the entire thing, you know, Kia's little spinny-outty-drunky-moment before... BAM, she snogs a stranger. Because, why not? When in 1829... So yes, this is the first of the 'original adventure' arc... and I've just realised I've got nine weeks left of "Changing Me" before the sequel ought to be entering final phase. Oops. Must start working on it...**

**Is anyone watching Once Upon A Time? It's on Channel 7 here in Aus, not sure about elsewhere... but isn't it fantastic? I've never been so in love with a show. I know it's great because it's SO good I don't feel the need to add an OC (as is my usual operation) to satisfy myself. Oh, well, I lie there, there's the little niggling plot-bunny telling me that I MUST write something dealing with Rumpelstiltskin. Oh dear Lord, am I in _love _with Robert Carlyle! I loved him as Hamish McBeth, and as Durza, and now as Rumpel. Johnny Depp better bring something FAN-F*CKING-TASTIC to the movie, because Robert will be hard to beat in my book. (And that's high praise, you know, me preferring someone over Johnny ;))**

_**Now, I demand a total of 1,000,000 reviews before I post the next chapter. Otherwise, I'll never ever post anything ever again and you'll all be left hanging, so there. :P**_


	11. Snowstorm

**Eleven: Snowstorm**

"Shit," I murmured quietly, successfully detangling myself from Charles Darwin's intoxicated brother. My stomach was up in knots although I didn't exactly know why; I was worried, really, about what the Doctor would think of me. I mean, I'd only met Erasmus tonight, and suddenly I was snogging him? Not that it was anybody else's business who I snogged… but still, I felt pretty awful as I threaded through the crowd, aching for a glimpse of a leather jacket and combat boots. Where the hell had he disappeared to, anyway?

I ran up the stairs two at a time, coming to a stop and panting thanks to the extra weight of clothing I was hauling around. I scoured the floor below, and with each moment that passed with no sign of the Doctor, my heart sank even further down. He wouldn't… _leave _me, would he? He couldn't leave me stranded here! "Where are you, where are you…" I muttered, growing increasingly anxious and irritated. Why'd he have to go and disappear like that? God sakes, I knew he was temperamental but _this _was extreme…

Growling, I stormed down the stairs once again and headed for the front door, pausing long enough to smile at Emma Wedgwood before I headed out into the cool night air; shivering instantly as snow landed on my exposed face. The storm was in full swing and my visibility was at almost zero, but I set out regardless, aiming for where we'd left the TARDIS.

In just a few steps, I found myself utterly lost. I couldn't even see the house behind me anymore, not even with the lights blaring on full. There was no sign of my footsteps leading back the way I'd come, as the moment I lifted my foot the snow shifted to cover the indentation of my feet. Striking out blindly, and on a complete whim, I turned directly to the left and walked in a straight- as straight as I could- line.

Several feet later, I stopped as I nearly bashed my head against a wall, one which I didn't recognise whatsoever. It was straight, though, and I kept a shivering hand on top as I followed it forward, altering my original course to the left just a little. I was on a road, I could see that much, but nothing else could tell me where I was. Fear settled in my stomach like a rock and curled up to twist in my throat.

Footsteps sounded near my right shoulder, and I turned to squint through the blinding snowstorm, very aware of how cold and lost I was. A dark shape moved closer, hulking and at least a foot taller than me. "Doctor?" I tried, a squeaky and small voice that held all the hope I had left. It wasn't him, it couldn't be, if it was why did he say something? "Doctor!" I tried again, as a particularly harsh gust of wind sent me stumbling forward. My hair whipped around my face and my skin felt like ice, little pricks of freezing cold piercing my skin. My teeth chattered in my head and my shoes were soaking wet; I couldn't feel my feet.

Suddenly, a pair of freezing hands grabbed me, one wrapping around my waist and the other covering my mouth. I kicked and screamed- muffled though it was- and fought relentlessly, all the while feeling myself being dragged backwards through the snow. No matter how hard I struggled, I couldn't dislodge the grip of my captor- who must've multiplied now, as I could barely move. I heard the creaking of doors opening behind me and tried to turn around to at least see where I was, but it was hopeless. I wasn't even touching the ground now- _completely stuck._

Light engulfed me and for a moment I basked in it, before being tossed roughly to the ground. Grateful for the copious amounts of skirts I was wearing that allowed me to bounce- well, land without breaking my rear- I tried to scramble to my feet and run for the doors before they could close. Unfortunately, I made it all of two steps before something caught my feet and I went crashing face-first to the ground, managing to catch myself on my hands just in time.

Lying on the ground, I flipped myself over to stare at the faces of my captors. What looked like humanoid snowflakes on legs stared back at me, with black beady eyes and glowing chests stared back at me, their spindly fingers that looked brittle enough to be snapped with one good kick wrapped around my ankles. I tried to move my feet, but found myself inescapably stuck. Slowly, and silently- which freaked me out more than anything- they began dragging me further into the depths of… where was I? Warehouse? Spaceship?

God, don't let it be a spaceship. Spaceships meant I could be kidnapped to another planet and I'd never, ever be found. Warehouses at least meant I could get away, try to find the Doctor.

I was released by the ice-people, unfortunately though I found myself in a small, barred cage. Before I could react, the door slammed shut and the ice-men walked away, their footsteps now sounding a bit like the sound light rain makes on a field of grass; that very faint _hiss _and _crackle. _All too soon, I was left alone, stuck in a tiny little cage with no Doctor, no TARDIS, and no com- hang on.

"Hello?" I whispered, moving to the edge of the cage, where the side of mine was pressed against someone else's. Inside, another young woman about my age looked up at me tearfully; she was wearing, to my surprise, a t-shirt with a picture of Daniel Craig, and the line _"Do I look like I give a damn?" _scrawled across the bottom in shattered-glass font. She obviously hadn't been brought here in the TARDIS… "What's your name?"

"L-Louie," she whispered. I nodded and beckoned her closer to the bars of the cage, wanting to comfort her. I suppose, if you hadn't had the Doctor on your side, this being stuck-in-the-past business would be pretty petrifying. Not to mention the ice-men; but honestly, after the Cybermen, these guys just weren't as scary. "Who are you?" Louie stammered, now huddling closer to me. Seeing as she was only in a t-shirt and jeans, I could understand why she was cold; I was in layers of skirts, and I was shivering.

"I'm Kia," I murmured, keeping my voice even. She looked even younger now that I could see her close up, probably only about seventeen. At a stretch. "How did you get here?"

Louie shuddered and I quickly tore my dress, mentally apologising to the Doctor, to shove the top layer through the bars. At least she could cover her arms now, find a little bit of shelter. "I don't know," she sobbed, hiccupping and breathing fast, quickly dissolving into hysteria. "One minute I was walking home from school and then there was this _noise _and wind and I couldn't breathe or move or see and then I was _here and I'm so cold and-"_

"Louie!" I hissed, squeezing my hand through the gaps in the bars to shake her gently. She jumped and stared at me, shaking hard, before slowly calming down and holding my steady gaze. "Calm down. I need you to listen to me very carefully- we're going to be alright, okay?"

She nodded, before shaking her head and sobbing again. "Ho-How can you know that?"

I thought of the Doctor, and how although he was kinda the reason I was in this mess, I knew he'd be going around the bend trying to find me. He didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would whisk me away for an adventure then abandon me the first chance he got. "Because I'm from 2009," I whispered, and Louie eyed my dress with sceptical eyes. "I have a friend, a wonderful friend, who will help us. But we need to stay calm and we need to-"

But Louie wasn't looking at me anymore; she was looking beyond me, at something behind my back. I turned around quickly to find the ice-men back, glaring at me with glinting black eyes. One reached out towards me and I scrambled away, pushing myself with feet and hands to get closer to the bars separating me from Louie. "Don't touch me!" I snapped, trying to sound menacing, but it came out as more of a nervous squeak than anything else.

Louie had crawled away and I was grateful at least that I could protect her, as the hands came closer and closer to my face. I turned my head to the side to put as much distance between me and it as possible, until I felt the icy tip of its' finger against my temple.

_You will follow._

The words echoed in my head and I gave a low groan of pain as a headache instantly blossomed. When I refused to move, the finger returned to my head.

_You will follow._

My headache intensified for a moment, before fading away to become a dull throbbing in the back of my head. Slowly, I picked myself up and obeyed, my feet feeling like lead as I trudged through the cool corridors to a wide, brightly lit room with a medical table in the middle. "Oh, hell no!" I stopped short, shaking my head, and felt the icy hands encircling my upper arms as they dragged me forwards. "No, no, _no! _I don't care what kind of freaky alien shit you got going on, I will _not _be your experiment! Let me _go!"_

The more I struggled, the closer I was to the table, where I could now see leather straps waiting to bind me to it. At the last minute, I braced myself against the ice-man behind me and lifted my feet off the floor, striking the bed right on the edge. It flipped over, sending it and the bottle of gas beside it skittling across the room. I continued kicking until my legs were tied, and I was pinned to the wall while the bed was righted again.

"Not happening," I muttered, wishing it really was a dream and I'd wake up and it would still be that morning and I'd be making pancakes and having coffee and the Doctor would come, and I wouldn't choose to meet Charles Darwin, I'd go to the future- far, far away from being kidnapped by ice-men, but then again I don't think going to the future would help me much, since I had the impression that the Doctor's life was full of this running-fighting-being captured stuff so no matter where I went, if I was with him, I was in trouble.

Something in my head clicked into place then, and a grin broke out before I could stop it. If this- the adrenaline, the adventure- was what life with the Doctor was going to be, I didn't want to stop. Ever. "Right, this really, _really _not happening, got it? I can't overpower you physically but the least you could do is talk to me! What do you want! Tell me what it is and I swear, I'll try to help you! Just tell me what you want!"

The progress stopped. I was released, quickly stepping into the middle of the room to watch the perimeter, which was covered by the ice-men. I could hear Louie sobbing blindly out the back and bit my lip, wishing she'd be quiet because hearing her crying was only serving to make me more afraid.

One of the ice-men stood in front of me and instinctively I cringed, waiting for their cold, strong hands to wrap around my arms again. Its' mouth lit up as it began to speak in a voice that sounded like wind whistling through trees, and seemed to come from every single walking icicle in the room. "We want information," the group whispered. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, nearly collapsing from relief. They spoke English. Therefore, there was a chance I could negotiate my release- and Louie's, too.

"Information," I breathed, nodding. "Right. What _kind _of information?"

"About Earth," they replied. Their way of speaking, the whispering echoes of voices, was really starting to freak me out. I grabbed a fistful of my dress and wished I was wearing something easier to run in. Something with pockets and preferably long sleeves, since it was _freaking _cold in there. "We seek to learn all we can. We are explorers."

"Then why the cloak-and-dagger act?" I shot back, waving my arms at the elaborate laboratory set-up they'd built. The table, the cages, the kidnapping me off a London street... plucking Louie right out of her own time frame. "Who are you, anyway? Why Earth? What do you need information for?"

"We are explorers," they repeated, and I rolled my eyes, rotating my wrist in a sort of _get-a-move-on _gesture I hoped they'd take as just that, not as some kind of threat. When I didn't get a response, I clicked my tongue and placed my hands on my hips; you'd be blind not to see my impatience. "We are the Skith," they said as one. Starting to get very freaky now, this constant talk-in-chorus thing. "We are explorers and collectors."

"Right, so that's what you've done to me and Louie, is it? Why us? Why only us?" I demanded, twisting away when the leader wanted to touch my head, to communicate telepathically. "No," I snapped, shaking my head. "That hurts. You speak."

"We are the Skith-"

"Yeah, you said that already," I muttered, and received a little irritated hiss in response. Wisely, I shut my mouth and allowed them to continue. The leader reached for my head again and I braced myself against the pain, mentally making a note to _melt _the sucker if he even thought of looking through my secrets.

_We are the Skith, _they whispered in my mind. _We collect things that do not belong. _My head instantly started to pound and I could feel the fob watch on my chest jolting frantically, as though it had come alive and was trying to escape.

"You brought Louie here," I said aloud, uncertain even as I said it. The Skith looked between one another and the leader reached for me again; I surprised even myself by staying still and waiting for the contact. Now that I was used to it, the pain had dulled and I even found myself _welcoming _the touch of someone else in my head, the feeling like I'd always been missing this telepathic contact welling inside me.

_We did not._

"Then _how _did she get here? She's not a local girl, that's for sure. James Bond doesn't even exist yet- let alone Daniel Craig. How did _you _get here, by the way?"

With another secretive look between them- one that had me wondering whether they were telling me the entire truth- the leader reached for my head again. This time, instead of words, a thousand images were streamed into my mind like water pouring into a cup.

And when that cup was full, I blacked out.

-[-]-

**Let me just apologise firstly for being late on the update; the reason is simply that my bank decided to have a fit and withdraw double payments for a bill, thus leaving insufficient funds for my poor wifi provider, who cut my internet. Add onto that my work deciding that I'm okay to work upwards of 10 hours a day for the last week, and I mostly came home and crashed with a glass of wine before having to do it all over again. **

**But hey, think of it this way; you've only got to wait until Wednesday for the next chapter! And because I truly feel horrible about not updating, I've posted a little one-shot from the distant future, with Jack and Rose featuring in guest roles. Sorry again for the lack of updatey-ness!**


	12. Skith

**Guys, first of all I'm incredibly sorry for the long delay in updates. My only excuse is that I was involved in a fairly serious car crash a few weeks ago (I'm better now!) and thus was busy with hospital and trying to recuperate. But, now that I'm well enough to concentrate properly (my head was the worst affected, and I couldn't handle looking at a computer screen/doctor said no) I'm updating here. Sorry again and hopefully we'll be back on track from now on; it just means that CM will go much, much longer! As always, enjoy the newest addition, and hopefully I've not lost too many readers over this delay :/**

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**Twelve: Skith**

I came to back in the cage. Louie was against the bars and calling out to me softly; I noticed with a smile that the Skith had given us both a blanket each. Apparently, my co-operation had given us brownie points. I wondered why they hadn't tried to do the same with Louie?

"Are you okay?" she was asking, and I sat up gingerly, my head spinning and my eyes slightly unfocussed. Something cold pressed against my chest and I felt the fob watch; why was it cold? It was never, _ever _cold! "Hey! You look like you're gonna faint again- hey! Are you alright? Kia?"

I looked at Louie, biting my lip and cuddling the watch close to me, hoping to warm it up again. Something wasn't right, that was for sure, and it scared me that the watch was suddenly _different. _Oh, where the hell was the Doctor? "What-" I croaked, stopping and clearing my throat. It could've been hours since I blacked, I realised. They could've taken information from me while I was unconscious. The thought made me shudder and nearly burst into tears, but I forced the lump in my throat back down. "What happened?" It occurred to me that I hadn't answered her question, but I didn't have the energy to correct myself.

Louie seemed relieved that I was finally talking. She slumped against the bars, huddled in her blanket, and stared at me with wide eyes. "They took you, and I heard you screaming. You were only gone a few minutes, then they brought you back- you've been out for so long, I thought they'd killed you... but you're alright?"

"In a manner of speaking," I muttered, blinking several times to try and clear my vision. "They didn't hurt me, Louie," I added, at my fellow captive's panicked look. I almost wanted the Skith to come back, because I had questions. Foreign images whirled around in my mind and I struggled to sort my own thoughts out from the things that had been planted by the Skith; the images of a war, of a planet being torn to shreds, of a single ship with six beings hurtling through time and space to land on Earth, having to hide when the sun came out...

"What happened to you?" Louie asked, her voice quiet and fearful. I struggled to raise my head, feeling so top-heavy with the longing to sleep. Or run, I don't know which I wanted more, but I knew this feeling of exhaustion and exhilaration rolled into one was doing my head in with confusion.

"The Skith," I said, nodding to the doors of the cage so she'd get that I was introducing our captors. "Are trapped. They're space-explorers, gatherers of information and anachronistic beings. They found me and you because we're clearly out of time, and they want information on how we did it, because they're sick of Earth and want out."

"But I don't-"

"You're easy; naturally occurring wormhole, a fissure in time and space drifting about that you just _happened _to walk into. Wrong place, wrong time. They haven't taken you because of two possible reasons- one, you don't know, or you're not psychically compatible. On the other hand, I do know how I got here, and apparently am," I interrupted casually, the words rolling off my tongue as easy as my own name. How I knew about wormholes and time-cracks escaped me at that point in time, as I crinkled my nose as a horrid smell halfway between rotting meat and petrol fumes drifted into the room. "Oh, ick. What are they doing now?" I muttered.

"Probably some kind of space probe to rip out our brains," Louie muttered morbidly. I cast a faintly irritated look at her and shook my head.

"They're telepathic," I replied, as if that ought to explain everything. To me, everything was plain as day- if the Skith wanted information, they'd take it with nothing but their minds. They didn't need to build probes or machines, they could simply _take _what they wanted. Or could they? Perhaps the reason why Louie hadn't been shown was because she _couldn't _be? But then, what made me so special? "Oi!" I shouted, rattling the doors of the cage as Louie moaned with fear behind me. At first, I'd felt nothing but sorry for her; now, I wished she'd toughen up a bit. That might have had something to do with the fact that I had just a smidge more experience in dealing with life-or-death than she had, or maybe because I could hear a faint singing in the back of my mind that had been there since the Skith touched my head. The song was beautiful, comforting me and making sure I knew that whatever the Skith were, they were not a threat to me.

Right on time, the head ice-man appeared and the door to the cage was opened. I took my cue and stood up, waiting for them to release Louie too. She might be irritating me, but I wouldn't leave her behind. She rushed to me and hugged my arm, practically walking on my heels as the Skith lead us closer to the source of the smell.

"So," I began cheerfully, as if I was confronted with aliens every day and this was a casual chat with old mates over a cup of tea, "Do you have individual names, or are you just the Skith?"

_Our names are incomprehensible to human ears._

Their voice was inside my head and he wasn't even touching me. That was new... and a little exciting. I was almost certain that they didn't want to hurt me or Louie, and to be honest they were kind of pretty, like diamonds in human form. And that singing in the back of my mind was making me feel quite dizzy, like some sort of sugar-rush. I was _buzzed _and I liked it.

"Aw, well, can I name you?" the question blurted out before I could stop myself, but the Skith just looked amused. As much as ice can look amused, which to be honest, isn't much. Yet somehow, I could _read _the mirth on their identical faces.

"Are you insane?" Louie hissed, glaring at me now as I tried to make friends with the Skith. The fact that they'd kidnapped me and held me captive was almost forgotten now, as the leader turned around and gave me what I could only call a smile. I grinned right back, almost drunk off the sensation spinning through my head now. My body was tingling and I felt like I could run a marathon or two, just off this vivacious energy flowing through me.

"Maybe," I said to Louie, sobering for a second to consider the possibility before grinning broadly and clapping my hands, skipping forward a little to walk beside the lead ice-man. "Make that probably. Wait, _definitely!"_

We continued through a brightly lit corridor, and as we emerged into a wide open room with the ship from my memories inside, broken and smoking and emitting that god-awful smell, I realised that I wasn't cold anymore.

A second later, I realised I ought to be freezing. My fingers had little icicles forming and my breath was released in puffs of steam; but I was perfectly warm. Louie was shuddering violently and had her eyes closed, her lips turning slightly blue. She should've brought her blanket, even if it wasn't particularly cold anymore. And the singing in my head was louder now, my drunken energy pulling my mind into the most wonderful of dances.

My body followed suit and soon I was spinning around the room, arms outstretched and hugging every Skith I passed. They didn't seem to mind my actions, one or two even hugging me back, until I returned to the leader and gave him the lowest bow I possibly could. Something in the back of my mind screamed at me for doing so but I ignored that faint whisper, and the throbbing of the fob watch on my chest. Everything could wait, because I felt too damned good to let anything spoil this mood.

"Right, you needed information? Go ahead," I smiled, my arms out wide and my eyes closing as I waited. "Take it, it's yours. Anything you want, just take it." I watched the shadows behind my eyelids as the Skith raised their hands to touch my forehead, and withdraw anything they needed from my mind. I longed for their touch again and wished they'd hurry up so I could hear that song, that beautiful melody that was enchanting my mind and soul. I wanted that feeling of being so loved, so warm, that nothing could penetrate the safety of my bubble.

My mind felt empty without the contact of theirs, and so naturally I wanted more of that feeling of companionship. And I wanted more of that song. And of the endorphins. And of the giddiness that had me swaying in time to an inaudible beat. I wanted to see the Skith homeworld and all the things they'd done, all the places they'd seen. I wanted to know how to repair a slip-stream engine and anything else they could teach me in a few seconds of a symbiotic information transfer. In return, I'd give them all they wanted to know...

Just as the tip of an icy finger brushed my temple, a voice rang loud and clear through the room. "Kia!" The hand was yanked away and I opened my eyes to smile at the Doctor in the doorway. I didn't register the panicked look he shot me, nor Louie quietly asking if I was _completely _mad. I held up a hand before turning back to the Skith leader, my bare hand reaching out to grab his. I entwined our fingers and, hooked and drunk off the telepathic contact, brought it back to my head. I wanted it, needed it, craved it- "Kia, _drop it!" _there was a high-pitched buzzing from the sonic screwdriver and something on the ship exploded in sparks.

The Skith began hissing and I felt a blinding flash of agony stab behind my eyes as I flung them open to see the Doctor running towards me. I stumbled until my back hit the wall and I slid down it with a moan of pain, the light making my head ache and my entire body feeling weak and numb and _empty._ I couldn't hear the singing and I was suddenly so extremely _cold. _Sleep would come very easily to me now...

"No! Kia, you stay awake, hear me? You, what's your name?" The Doctor's demanding voice brought me back, if only a little. He was touching my face- how nice- and rubbing my arms, trying to warm me up. I wanted his jacket, because I remembered he smelled good and I liked leather jackets and a jacket would be warm- as if he read my thoughts, the Doctor placed his jacket around my shoulders, a little extra lining between my bare skin and the walls as cold as ice.

"Louie."

"Louie, interesting... You keep her awake, don't let her fall asleep, will you? I don't care what it takes, just keep her awake!"

I could hear the words but nothing sank in. I was drifting on a cloud of nausea and exhaustion, numb and electrified all at once. A million thoughts and sounds and sights were rushing through my head and I tried to stem the flow, only to feel my mind barrel over the barriers and the floodgates snapped. My eyes rolled in my head as I fought to hear what someone was shouting, fought to hear over the rushing of blood in my ears.

Something was moving against my chest... the watch.

It was warm again, probably the only point of warmth I could feel despite Louie sitting right beside me. She was talking to me, narrating what was going on- I was slumped against her shoulder, unable to move and unable to see. Someone was holding my hand and I wanted to know who it was- because they were so _warm, _and I was so _cold..._

And there was a voice in my ear, one I'd been longing to hear again since I was eleven years old. It broke my heart and saved me, all at the same time.

_You are strong, Kiarna. It's okay to fall asleep. I'm here, sweetheart, I'm here._

My eyes stung as I desperately clung to that voice. "Mum..."

-[-]-

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**A/N:**

We should be back to regular weekly, Wednesday updates from now on... _next update on 5th September... _and there may be a surprise in the making! After the accident, I was unable to remember large chunks of time and this week, I've been looking through my documents folder to try and figure out as much as I could. My memory is coming back in patchy bits, so this document-reading thing has helped. Guess what I found? Go on, guess! Alright, I'll tell you; it's the beginnings of a Once Upon A Time fanfiction! (two, actually). One is centered on a gender-bended Robin Hood (so he's a she, though everyone else retained their... original gender), and her adventures in both FTL and Storybrooke. It's called Sticky Fingers and is in the developing/brainstorming stage.

The other is called Contingency, and centres on a woman named Delancy Morris, who was given the task of making sure Emma arrived in Storybrooke on her 28th birthday and guiding her through breaking the curse and beyond.

And as always with me, I've fallen in love with one particular character of OUAT (Rumpelstiltskin) and thus... yeah, both of them are RumpelxOC stories... if I were to post these in the future, would anybody be interested in reading them?

Also... I've discovered a folder of Doctor Who shirts I've roughly designed, featuring the Weeping Angels, TARDIS, Daleks, 9, 10 and 11... so yeah. It's like opening a time capsule and looking at all this stuff, all the while thinking 'I know I did this, I just can't remember'. It's a terrible feeling :/

Oh well. Thanks for your patience and sticking by me, guys :)

x MS


	13. Home Away From Home

**Chapter the Thirteenth has arrived! Day late but, well... we'll just blame that on lingering head issues. Which, I've just realised, makes the next subplot of Changing Me quite ironic, with the way Kia's... SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS and all of that. And on that note; enjoy! **

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**Thirteen: Home Away From Home**

Have you ever had a dream so real, so vivid, that stays with you long after you've woken up? Even if you can't remember what happened or who was there, you can still feel whatever you felt in that dream and it hovers in your head all day, with snippets of images and sounds coming back to you every so often?

That was precisely the feeling I had as I woke in my bed back home. I could remember exactly what happened to me- well, parts of it. I recalled Charles Darwin, and I remembered dancing with Erasmus, then being lost in the snow while looking for the Doctor. I remember being taken by the ice-men, the Skith, and being cold... there was a cage... and something about cups? After that... nothing. My mind buzzed and ached as I struggled to remember, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling.

My body was weak, as if I'd been asleep too long. I tried to clench my fist but my muscles wouldn't work properly; I could curl my fingers, but not clench them. Shaking my hand to loosen the muscles, I tried again and succeeded, oddly triumphant at overcoming my own weakness. Slowly, feeling my head spin slightly with vertigo, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked down at myself in shock; I was wearing my jimjams- shorts and a halter top- which I most definitely had _not _been wearing before going to see Charles Darwin.

Therefore, someone had changed me while I was out.

"Doctor!" I shouted, stomping my foot. I doubted he would have heard me from there, but it was satisfying all the same. Storming to the door, I yanked it open to find myself in a white-washed hallway with a coral pattern; in other words, definitely _not _the hallway in my flat. Eyes wide, I turned around to stare at my bedroom- because it was mine. The bed still rumpled, the book lying face-down on the end table exactly where I'd left it, my dirty clothes from the Cybermen incident still crumpled in the corner. My room, but not my flat. "What the hell is going on?"

"You're awake," a gruff, familiar voice came from the doorway. A foot or so behind me, to be precise, and as I whirled around I found myself face-to-face with a slightly frowning Doctor. He didn't look pleased and abruptly, my actions with Erasmus flitted through my mind as a reason. "Good. How's your head?"

I paused to consider the question, reeling slightly as a headache reared up, snarling and growling. "Dizzy," I replied at length. My vision blurred and I stepped back to steady myself, a hand flying to pinch the bridge of my nose. "What- where did you go? At the party, I mean, where..." I asked, aware of how pathetic I sounded.

"Caught a psychic signal, went to investigate," the Doctor responded, waving the sonic screwdriver at me. He seemed a little happier now, and I returned to the bed, feeling safer as I was lower to the ground. "You looked like you were having a good time; didn't want to disturb your fun." I flushed and looked down at my hands, embarrassed. I still had little to no idea what had happened to me after I left the party, and by the curious look on the Doctor's face, I was about to find out. "Kia, what happened with you and the Skith?" he asked, and my heart sank.

"I don't know," I replied quietly. "I was hoping you could tell me." I fell backwards and stared at the ceiling- it was comforting, for the simple reason that from here, I could almost imagine myself back at home where all of this was just a dream. A marvellous, scary, deliciously tempting dream. The bed dipped as the Doctor sat beside me, neither of us saying a word. I didn't want to break the silence, the tense silence that I'm sure would only lead to questions I had no answer for. What _had _happened to me? The Skith had done something, that was obvious. If the Doctor didn't know, it was unlikely I ever would.

"Talk me through what you _do _remember," the Doctor asked suddenly. I bit my lips so hard they hurt, unsure just why I was feeling so hesitant to find out what I'd done, or seen. Surely I hadn't been that bad, had I? Whatever happened, it couldn't be so bad to make me terrified at the thought of it.

Tentatively, unsure and quiet, I began. "We were at the party. I was... dancing... with Erasmus Darwin-" the Doctor snorted and I shot him a glare, telling him in no uncertain terms to _zip it- _"-and you disappeared. I thought... I thought you might've gone to the TARDIS, so I decided to meet you there." I didn't mention that I'd thought he was _jealous _of my snogging a famous naturalist's younger brother, since I figured that might be just a bit self-flattering. "I barely made it out the garden gate when the snow was too thick to see. Then these... _hands... _they grabbed me, dragged me away... we were in a warehouse. It was cold in there, so bloody cold. I remember praying it wasn't a spaceship." I had to stop there. After this point, things got a bit foggy and difficult to remember, almost like I was drunk from then on in or something. My memories were hazy at best, slowly descending into utter darkness until I woke up not ten minutes ago.

"That's it?" the Doctor didn't seem disappointed; more frank, than anything else.

As for me, I felt rather inadequate for not remembering more. "What happened with you and the Skith?" I asked, aware I was echoing his question but needing to know.

His expression hardened; I could see the muscles in his jaw tensing as I craned my neck up to watch him. I found I could read him easier if I could see his face, but reading the Doctor was a hard task anyway. "They were relocated," he replied, voice hard and growly. The same tone he used when he wasn't happy about something; I wanted to ask, but he cut me off by standing and heading for the door. "I couldn't fix their ship, and their planet is lost. I took them to Scoria, an uninhabited ice planet with plenty of junk buried in its' soil. They'll be happy, and will _never _return to Earth."

"I'm glad they'll be okay," I muttered. "I mean, they didn't hurt me, though they must've had a chance to."

His expression fell even further now and he left without a word. I remained sitting on the bed for a second later before the look on his face and the tone of his voice registered. He wasn't happy, at all. There was something else I didn't know about, and it set my teeth on edge. Instinctively, my hand rose to cup the watch around my neck, a comforting habit whenever I was scared or stressed. A moment, or two maybe, passed before I rolled to my feet and ran to the door, intent on finding the Doctor. Something else was up. I wanted to know what.

The whitewashed hallway stretched as far to the left as I could possibly see, and to the right was a corner. Turning left looked exhausting- I wasn't up to hiking through the TARDIS no matter how interested I was in finding the secrets of this fantastic ship- so I turned right and set out for the corner. There, I found a hallway lathed in green, which ended in a blue door. I wondered if this was some sort of colour-coding, for even the Doctor was bound to get lost in here sometime, right?

The blue door lead to the console room, lucky for me. The Doctor was already there, leaning over the panel furthest from me and seemed a little perkier at the fact that I'd found my way. "I was waiting for you to start yelling again," he teased, lifting his head and giving me a grin. I couldn't help but grin back; he was infectious. I would very much like to meet someone who could look at him grinning and not feel happy.

"_I_ do not yell," I retorted haughtily, putting on a posh accent and making myself at home in the jump-seat. "I summon." The Doctor laughed, the sullen mood entirely gone, and I felt immensely pleased with myself. "So, how come my room's on the TARDIS?" I asked, genuinely curious. I'd met people like the Doctor before- closed off and pretty walled in when it came to answering the hard stuff- so I figured if I wanted the truth, I'd start off with something he couldn't help but brag about.

"The TARDIS made a copy of it, installed it in the matrix," he replied quickly, one eyebrow cocked as he waited for my next inevitable question. And sure as smoke from a fire, I asked.

"Why would she do that?"

The Doctor's grin returned and he bounced around the console to sit beside me, his long legs stretched out and his ankles on the console edge. He still looked plenty comfortable, whereas I was almost swinging my legs- sadly, this demonstrates how short I was. Am. Whatever. "Wanted to make you feel at home, I guess. Why'd you call her a she?"

I shrugged. "All ships are traditionally referred to as female." A realisation stole over me then and I felt horrified at my demonstration of ignorance, panicking slightly as I stared at the Doctor. "Is that wrong? It's not offensive, is it? I swear, I didn't know-" He was shaking his head, laughing under his breath. At me, I'm sure. It seemed that if he wasn't saving my life or demanding answers, he was laughing at me.

"Fantastic, I've picked a politically correct ape." I huffed under my breath, but getting the gist that it was a backhanded compliment. My elbow met his ribs and he barely moved, but his laughter kicked up a notch. Sulking slightly, I stood up and circled the console, wanting to make a dramatic exit but not certain I could find my room again. More than likely, he knew this, and therefore stayed put on the seat as he watched my curious wandering.

"Doctor," I began, unable to see him and feeling suddenly a whole lot more confident. Funny that, isn't it? I couldn't fathom interrogating him to his face. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

In an instant, he rounded the console and was facing me. I stood my ground; I might be useless at demanding answers when I was facing him, but I would stand by what I wanted. Even if the dark look he was giving me did unnerve me just a bit. "There are things you are not telling me, Kia," he muttered loudly, nodding to himself when my brows furrowed in a frown. Sure there were things I'd kept to myself, simply because I didn't know him well enough to speak of them. "Do you know why the Skith were collecting anachronistic beings?"

I had an idea, yeah. A whisper of an idea floating in the back of my head, brought about when he'd said _anachronistic beings. _I'd heard that before, had I not? Hang on, I think I said it... "They were collecting... information... on how I was displaced in time... they could sense I wasn't from that period... they wanted to know how, because they wanted out."

He nodded to confirm that I was right, but he was still frowning. "Specifically, they wanted _you_." The Doctor took my wrist gently and raised it up, and for the first time I saw my fingers. They were pink, a fresh layer of skin growing over them. They looked like the new skin that formed over a burn, but the Skith were made of ice... _ice can burn. _"You are low-level psychic, they had an enhancement module. They wanted to freeze you and take the information right out of your head, whether you consented or not. Then, they discovered this," he dropped my hand and plucked the chain around my neck. As if stung, a pulse of electricity jolted me to leap a foot away, protectively curling my fist around the watch. Eyes wide, I felt on edge, just waiting for the next attack.

"Right. So they almost froze me. You saved me, I'm guessing." He nodded, and I let out a sigh. "God, this is confusing. Sometimes I can remember, and sometimes I think I can remember. I don't know what's real or not..." I felt my heart-rate increasing steadily into a hum as I struggled to breathe evenly, my mind reeling and quickly falling into hysteria. It was not a pleasant feeling to think something, then instantly doubt whether you'd thought it at all, or only remembered you'd thought it, or perhaps thought you remembered thinking it.

"That would be the Skith," the Doctor replied, not moving towards me as I spun on the spot and tried to sort my thoughts out. "They impressed their knowledge into your mind, implanted the desire to obey. Did you hear them singing?"

The song. That beautiful song. I could remember hearing it, but it didn't have half the effect I remember it having. I didn't want to fall asleep and only hear that song forever; the melody twirling and curling inside me, capturing my heart and mind until all I could do was follow it. "Yes," I whispered hoarsely. The Doctor nodded, his expression unreadable as always. He didn't meet my gaze, which was a bit of a disadvantage when it came to me trying to guess what was on his mind. Not that I had any hope anyway, I figured. He was an alien. He could blindside me and be halfway across the galaxy before I realised.

"Hypnotism. Crude and unreliable form of mind-control; but with someone like you, already susceptible to that kind of thing, enhanced with their own technology, and that watch. It was a drug." His explanation actually made sense. I had expected it to, but hearing him say it- especially the bit about being drugged- made me feel a whole lot better about the fuzzy nature of my memories. There was still a lingering feeling of forgetfulness, like there was something very important that I was skipping. Like having something on the tip of your tongue but never quite getting it.

"Right," I muttered, feeling slightly better. Only slightly, mind; I couldn't quite wrap my head around the fact that I'd gone back in time, been kidnapped by aliens stranded on Earth, drugged and whatever-else by said aliens, and could not remember anything at all about it. Shaking my head and fighting off the tears of shock and confusion and frustration and whatever else I was feeling, I shook my hair out of my face and looked at the Doctor expectantly, something he'd said earlier floating back through my tormented brain. "You said they wanted me."

His eyes were locked on my chest, though I knew he wasn't looking at me. The watch. It had to be; he had shown an unusual interest in it right from the beginning. I had no idea why it held such intrigue for him, but I knew it had to be what he wanted. "That is no ordinary watch, Kia. The Skith could sense its otherworldly properties and wanted to use it for their own gain. They would have killed you had I not found you in time."

"Otherworldly?" I muttered, ignoring the last part. I already felt bad enough that I'd gotten myself in a stupid captive situation and had to be rescued by the Doctor; I really didn't need to be any further in this man's debt. I hated owing people, and owing him for my life three times already was quite enough. For the first time, I tugged the watch into the light in front of the Doctor, not missing his eyes locked on it hungrily. If it were from another planet, it may just be simple curiosity that had him so interested. But no... he looked upset at the fact that it was around my neck, had been irritated when I refused to give it to him before. This had to be more than just a trinket. "It's a broken old watch that doesn't open."

"But it speaks to you, doesn't it?" the Doctor murmured, as I nodded vaguely. He was right, of course. It didn't speak to me in words, so much, more as in I felt compelled to do anything to protect that watch. If I took it off for more than an hour, I felt naked. If I took it off in front of the Doctor, or he attempted to touch it while I was wearing it, I would either have screams in my head or electric shocks on my skin. Those signs were subtle but obvious enough for me to read; _do not lose the watch. Do not give it to the Doctor. Do not let him near it. _I fully intended to keep those promises, feeling in some small way that perhaps doing that would bring me closer to my mother. I missed her with every fibre of my being; protecting the watch may have stemmed from family loyalty, but it ran much deeper than that. I hated to think of what would happen if I ever lost it.

"Tell me everything, Doctor. I want to know."

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**And there we go!** Stay tuned for next week's update, when an attempt at revealing the truth has... less than pleasant consequences involving... well, you'll see next week, won't you? See you on the **13th September!**


	14. Stalemate

**Haha, YES! Half an hour to go until midnight ticks over! To be honest I nearly didn't make it to the computer today- damn my boss calling me in early, then making me stay late. It's not like cracked ribs hurt or anything. Oh, I don't mind really; the extra money is always handy and the sooner I get back into normal routine, the better. Three weeks on from the crash and life is pretty much back to regularity. Aside from the niggling issues, but they barely matter anymore. Good news is I'm back. Bad news is there's only five chapters left. By the 18th October, Changing Me will be finished. Hopefully by Christmas, the sequel will be making a debut! Fingers crossed!**

**Now, as always, happy reading!**

**- MS x**

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**Fourteen: Stalemate**

I stood nervously in the console room, one hand clutching the watch and the other fiddling with the hem of my shirt. The Doctor had sent us into a state of stationary movement- only he used long, alien words and ran about impressively with grand gestures and large smiles until I was as baffled as a penguin in Africa. Basically, we were moving through the Time Vortex, but actually going nowhere…

"So, drifting?" I asked, as the Doctor stopped short and gave me a sidelong look.

"I was being impressive and brilliant, and you ruin it by saying something dull like that." He sighed heavily. I couldn't stop myself from giggling at his childish pout, one that faded into a serious half-smile as he pulled one last lever and gently took my head in his hands. "Try to relax. I'm going to sift through your memories to find the ones we need, of the Skith. Anything you don't want me to see, lock it behind a door. I won't look if you don't want me to, I promise."

"You can read my mind?" I whispered, astounded. It really shouldn't surprise me with everything I've seen, yet somehow this fact shocked me beyond anything else. It was the little things, I suppose, that really lit up my interest. The Doctor nodded and I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and locking away memories of my mother and my life that he had no place in seeing, shutting them all behind a door. I tried to keep my breathing steady as I opened my eyes, finding the Doctor less than a foot away. His gaze burned into mine and I nodded, consenting to the invasion and letting him know I was ready.

"Just relax, Kia. It won't hurt, I promise."

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in... a headache was forming in the base of my neck. This was where they usually began, my headaches. The watch felt hot on my skin, through my shirt, and the chain around my neck began to itch and tighten. I tried to touch it, to take it off, but my fingers couldn't pry it away from my skin. I heard the Doctor say my name as the headache blossomed into a physical hit of agony that sent me reeling away, stumbling over my own feet and sprawling on the ground.

The headache was gone, and the watch was normal. I tore the chain off from around my neck and felt for melted skin, but found everything was fine. The watch was returned to its place and I slowly pushed myself onto my side, before rolling onto my stomach and pushing myself- not without a bit of difficulty- to my feet. The console was less than a foot away and I used that to regain my feet before looking for the Doctor. Dizzily, I stumbled forward and caught myself halfway down, taking deep breaths to stop my stomach tossing like a rodeo bull.

"Doctor?" I murmured, feeling steady enough to look around.

He was out, still lying on the grating a few feet away, but stirring as I watched. I swayed dangerously and stumbled to the jump-seat, wanting to be a little closer to the ground and have something soft to land on if I fainted again. Was that even what had just happened? It didn't feel like a faint. It felt like something had pushed me, like invisible arms had caught me round the middle and thrown me far away from the Doctor, and him away from me. He sat up slowly and looked for me, eyes wide with concern. Spotting me on the jump-seat, he crawled over and dragged himself up, allowing me to rest against his shoulder a moment later.

"You okay?" I asked, genuinely concerned. I felt him nod and knew he was lying, but let it go. "What happened?"

"There is something powerful protecting your mind from me," he replied heavily, voice slurred and very tired. I knew I wasn't much better, although I hadn't been awake all that long. "You must have let the Skith through."

"I let you through," I replied, snuggling against him just a little. I think my reaction to being even slightly cold would be forever changed from my meeting the Skith, and leather is actually quite comfortable, and he smelled of peppermint and old things and new things and things I couldn't even name, all at once. It was intoxicating. "I wanted you more than them."

"I just have one of those faces," he sighed. I was aware of the joke, however tiredly it was made, and made an effort to chuckle. He shrugged and bumped my head, which only made me laugh harder, until he swept but from under me and dragged me to my feet. "Go lie down again, will you? You're not up to scratch. I'll land us somewhere safe and we can explore when you're rested up."

"But-"

"Go on, get!" he shooed me out of the console room and I hurried myself away, giggling to myself. He was right, actually. I might have wanted to protest and go see just what he deemed safe- going to a party at Charles Darwin's house was supposedly safe- but I was tired. Inexplicably tired. Maybe it was because of the Skith, maybe it was because of whatever had hit me when the Doctor tried to read my mind. It was odd though, I thought, as I found my room almost by instinct and collapsed into bed, that the Skith got in so easily while the Doctor was thrown out.

My musings faded out as my mind slowly shut down, and slumber swept me away to a dreamland I can never quite remember. What felt like minutes- but must have been hours- later, I heard something strange. It wasn't in the dream and it wasn't the usual sounds I expected to hear while asleep. A high-pitched whine, starting somewhere inside my own mind but originating outside, began to build in volume inside my head. I stirred and rolled over, trying to block out that horrible sound. I twitched and flung a pillow over my head, but still the whine persisted, turning into a determined scream. I had heard this sound before, I realised. But where? My sleep-fogged mind wouldn't work, I couldn't remember...

_I was in a cage, not alone, someone else was there. A girl, a young girl, Daniel Craig on her shirt. Louie. She was afraid. The Skith, they took me, they wanted to strap me down. I fought, offered to help them, they showed me their everything, their plight. Back in the cage. Louie- Louie! Must ask about Louie- she called my name. Something in my mind shifted; I wasn't afraid or cold anymore. Something had changed. The watch was cold, I was warm. My mind was buzzing like a net waiting to be filled, like there was so much more space inside my head that just needed to be used._

And still the whine persisted. And I knew where I'd heard it before.

_The Skith came back. They took Louie and I back to the table-room. I danced around, hugging them. Wanting to name them. Feeling happy around them. They smiled at me but I could see their true faces, they're ugly. They snarled at me. Grabbed at my head, they were in my head, singing to me, talking to me, they wanted to know everything. I would give them everything. The Doctor- the Doctor shouted- the Doctor..._

I sat bolt upright in bed and instantly turned for the door, which was half ajar. I distinctly remembered closing it before going to bed, closing it properly too. I remembered taking off the watch and placing it in the bedside table, as I wouldn't sleep with it around my neck. The drawer was open. And the watch was gone.

The Doctor.

Flipping back the blankets, I raced out the door and straight for the console room. Empty. Of course, I thought, he wouldn't go there when it would be the first place I'd look. He'd go somewhere I'd never been before. That wouldn't stop me though; I would find him if I had to tear the TARDIS apart. A light above me flickered and I reached out a hand to touch the walls, feeling more than a little silly but understanding this perhaps above all else; the ship was alive, and I wasn't angry at her. The TARDIS had done no wrong; her stupid, moronic, self-serving arse of a pilot, however, was a different story.

I stormed down the halls, not caring where I was going and ending up in the console room more than once. I thought perhaps the TARDIS was sending me in circles, but something sparked near my elbow when I thought it and I apologized again. She wasn't helping him, nor was she helping me. "Smart," I muttered. No reply. Hadn't really expected one to come, actually. The ship may be sentient but she wasn't vocal unless she really, honestly had an opinion. Or so I noticed.

Finally, I found a doorway that lead me into a library. At first, I was amazed at the sheer amount of books housed in the room, and the fact that a swimming pool had appeared in the middle of the floor. A moment later, I was aware of a Time Lord standing across the water from me, with my watch dangling on its' chain from his fist. It was still screaming in my head and though I'd managed to block it out while searching, the scream returned full-force now and I buckled against the door.

The Doctor hurried over to me, and I snatched for the watch. He shoved it out of my reach and tried to ask me what was wrong; I gave him the best death glare I could muster and grabbed the watch, slinging the chain around my neck. With the screaming gone, my strength returned, and my anger reigned.

"You had no right!" I fumed, fists clenched. He held up his hands in an innocent, surrendering gesture but it did nothing to assuage my fury. "This is _my _property, and I don't _care _if this is your ship, this is _mine _and you had no right!" My head was spinning and my body felt warm, not just from sleep and adrenaline either. I was beyond furious.

I watched his expression go from innocent to sheepish to as angry as I was. I knew he could be scary when he was angry; I never expected how frightening having his anger focussed on me would be. "That watch contains the consciousness of a Time Lord, someone _just like me! _They could be trapped, or in trouble, and they're the only hope I have of finding someone else, since as I'm sure you remember, _I am the last! _I think that gives me just a _bit _of a right, don't you _Kiarna_?" he seethed, volume much lower than mine but with twice the rage in his tone. He had had more practise than me, I supposed, but I was still determined to give him a good what-for.

"Don't call me Kiarna!" I shrieked at him, shaking my finger at him; what kind of jerk is he, anyway, to go rifling through my drawers at night! Especially while I slept not two feet away! "This watch belonged to the most important person in my life, Doctor, and that person is _dead!" _So callous, and he flinched, but I closed my eyes and told myself I didn't care; "So I would appreciate it if you would _leave it alone." _My voice was calm now, probably because I couldn't see him, and the watch wasn't screaming in my head anymore. Without that buzzing whine in my head, I found myself a lot calmer. Which wasn't really saying much, as I was pretty worked up in the first place. I'd been on edge about the watch since the moment he made comment on it; now, my fears and trepidations were realised.

"The Time Lords are dead, Kia!" the Doctor spat, fury in every syllable, "and you've got the last link in the universe. Don't you understand what that's like for me?" He was close to me now, and I opened my eyes to take a step away. I would stand my ground but I refused to let him dominate me; he would not win this argument by intimidating me with superior physical stature. Damned if he would.

I snarled at him, ignoring the pain he tried desperately to mask with anger. I had my own pain to deal with, my own confusion. I deserved a little credit; in less than three days, I'd gone from being a parentless nobody to someone coming to terms with the fact that aliens were real and that _I_ might not be human. "I have an idea of what it's like to lose everything, yeah. I'm sorry for your loss. But this watch is still _mine _regardless of its' origins- it belonged to _my mother!"_

"Give me the watch," he demanded suddenly, holding out a hand like he thought I'd just give in. I shoved the chain over my head and the watch down my shirt, daring him to try and get it. I'd rip his head off if he tried, I swear I would. "Kiarna, don't play games with me. Don't ever, ever think you're capable of that- _give me the watch."_

"This watch," I breathed, shaking my head and quietly begging him to understand, "whines at me when I take it off. When you go near, it screams, and it _hurts_. I can't."

"Kiarna," he growled, the usage of my full name no longer serving to irritate me. All it- and the look of rising irritation on his face- did was make me tired of arguing with him. Why couldn't he just _listen?_ The watch was important to both of us, so surely we could work together so we both got what we wanted? It meant as much to him as it did to me; it was a link to our dead loved ones, though he had many more than I to grieve for.

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but I just can't alright? Not right now at least. Maybe... if you give me time... I'm- I'm sorry."

"Please," he tried soft and gentle now, the same as he had back in the alley. The watch throbbed against my chest and I squeezed my eyes shut, hardly believing the words I was about to say.

"Look, I get it, I really do. You want the watch because you think I'm it. If the watch opens, you get another Time Lord. What about me? What do I get? Death? The loss of the one thing of Mum's I've got? I know it hardly compares- the loss of a parent to the loss of a species- but please, please try to understand that at least _right now, _we're at an impasse... if you can't, then... well," I took a deep breath, bowing my head, and in a small voice I whispered; "Then I think you should take me home."

"Fine," he snapped, whirling on his heel and stalking from the room. As he left, the TARDIS rumbled. I hesitated before following him to the console room. I made sure to arrive there as we landed in Cardiff, stopping on the way out to admire the TARDIS one last time. I had no idea if this was the last I'd be seeing of her, of the Doctor, but by the way he ignored me and the doors opened of their own accord, I surmised that he would be only too glad to see the back of me. I stepped out into a cool Cardiff evening, across the road from my flat, and the TARDIS doors snapped shut at my heels. A second later, she started to disappear, and I held my breath until she'd gone before entering the flat and slamming the door behind me.

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***Cue dramatic music* I don't know how I feel about this chapter, to be honest. Kia's acting like a brat and she kind of irritates me here... but probably because I'm all-seeing and thus know her future, and that someday, this incident will... I have got to stop almost doing a River and blurting out spoilers while trying to avoid spoilers. I loved River Song, but God that annoyed me. Or perhaps I'm just in an annoyed sort of mood this evening? Meh.**

**On a lighter note, the new episode of Doctor Who "Asylum of the Daleks" premiered in Australia last Saturday. All I can say is- I WANT OSWIN BACK ALREADY! Honestly, she swept in and stole my heart and then Moffat went and killed her off. So, Season Seven, hurry up and bring her back. Like, now. Oh, and Moffat? Tell Benedict and Martin to drop everything and continue making Sherlock. I've memorised the first two seasons. Need more. Like, now.**

**Question for readers!**

**- I posted a future!oneshot for "Changing Me" a while back. Would you like to see more of them?**

***cue gasp as I realise how long this AN is* Right, sorry! See you next week, on the 20th September!**

**P.S. Four more reviews will make "Changing Me" my most popular story to date. So thank you so, so incredibly much for that. I'm chuffed :)**

**- MS x**


	15. Derailed

**Once again I find myself in the position of having to apologize for lateness in updating; my wifi has a 4gb limit and I went over, thus leaving me with no internet. My local library has no wifi either due to system upgrades, and the parents have put a password on theirs so I can't leach from the car sitting around the block **

**Oh well. This sounds more like a post for Rich People Problems or one of the spartz network sites… anyway, apologies and here is Chapter Fifteen… enjoy!**

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**Fifteen: Derailed**

Three hours later, I'd scrubbed the kitchen floors until they shone, washed every cup, dish and plate, rearranged my book collection and thought about regrouting the bathroom before I realised I didn't have any grout. I couldn't help it; when I was upset, I went on a cleaning spree until I ran out of things to clean and was forced to confront whatever it was upsetting me. Throughout my determined mission, I avoided my bedroom like the plague; even that reminded me of the TARDIS and of the Doctor- and went for the kitchen, desperately needing a cup of tea. Four cups later, I was still on edge, and paced the length of the hallway outside my bedroom. I regretted asking to come home, truth be known. I hadn't honestly wanted to say goodbye to everything I found with the Doctor, but at the same time, I knew I couldn't look at him without feeling betrayed.

All night, I slept fitfully on the couch, jumping at every strange sound and once or twice, rushing to the window or door every time a car with odd engine sounds drove by. I was furious with the Doctor, but I didn't want to believe that everything I'd found was gone. For good.

As dawn rolled around, I dragged my disappointed and nearly exhausted backside to the kitchen and was delighted to discover that my power was back on. A glance at the calendar informed me that it had been just over a fortnight- since I met the Doctor. A fortnight in Earth-time equated to… nearly six days for me. In that time… so much had happened. I'd broken character to follow a weird girl into a back alley, seen a blue police box appear out of nowhere, met a man who wasn't human, been attacked by and then defeated an army of robot men from Earth's future, gone travelling with the alien man, met a pickled Charles Darwin, snogged his pickled younger brother in the year 1829, came into contact with kidnapping ice-men, been kidnapped and psychically assaulted, rescued by the Doctor, found out my own mother wasn't human and therefore neither was I, fought with the Doctor…

Laying it out like that in one run-on sentence that my English teacher would've thrown a fit over made the last few days seem so much longer than they actually were. I felt years older, decades more mature; and, if I had to admit it, just a little superior. Aliens existed and _I _had met one- technically, I _was _one. Half Time-Lord, whatever that was. I leaned against the kitchen counter, hands hip-width apart as I bowed my head and closed my eyes. My head was pounding, my heart was hurting, my stomach could barely handle smelling the freshly made cup of tea and the thought of actually drinking it made me want to run to the bathroom.

The emotional rollercoaster of the last six days had finally come to a stop and the relief and safety of home I felt was bewildering. It started as a weight in my stomach before crawling its way up my throat and fogging over my brain. The pressure in my throat was unbearable and I choked, feeling my poor empty stomach twist as bile raced its way up. Spinning away from the counter, I raced, hand-over-mouth, to the bathroom and collapsed beside the porcelain throne.

Minutes later, exhausted and weak, I leaned against the wall and tilted my head back, trying to breathe through my nose and settle my stomach down. Something dripped down my shirt and quick investigation revealed that I was crying. The realisation sparked more tears and soon I was sobbing unrestrained, not caring how loud or how much the sobs hurt because I was alone in the flat and nobody would come anyway.

Mum was all I had in the world and she'd been gone for years. Losing her had shattered me and I'd never really taken the time to cry. I kept busy. I threw myself into looking after other people. I studied my backside off to get through high school. I worked two jobs, upping it to three after graduation. I went to university. I got my own flat and made it up from the hell-hole it had been six years ago. I spent so long trying to forget that I hadn't put the time, nor effort, into making any lasting friendships. Or relationships. Or _anything. _I barely knew my co-workers, my classmates were virtual strangers.

Then the Doctor came and everything changed. Suddenly, life was more than just school, work and sleep. Life was exciting. Life was invigorating. It was something I wanted to be part of- and the Doctor… the Doctor made all of that possible. He was someone I related to, someone who made the occasional loneliness seem at least bearable. I barely knew him, either, but for the first time in _so _long I wanted to let someone in. Shutting myself off after Mum was my defence. The Doctor- or rather, the _possibility _of the Doctor- had shaken it up.

Eventually, I crawled my way into the shower and turned on the water, letting it wash me clean and nearly scald my skin in an effort to wake up properly. The towels afterward were soft and the luxury of clean clothes lifted my spirits minimally. I drank my now-cold tea and realised that all of this, my normal morning routine, felt so mundane and monotonous now. It had taken _six days _for that change to occur.

It made me wonder what _six years _would do, and the tears welled again before I swallowed them back down and took three, calming breaths. I needed to get out of the flat. Heading into a public place would stifle the tears- I hated people watching me cry- and distract me. Distractions worked last time and I would do everything to make sure they worked this time. I'd go see how Cardiff was dealing with the Cybermen- _Lord, _how long ago did that feel?- and how well the city was recovering. I'd go to the library- maybe the front desk had the bag I left behind. I'd go to school, then to work, then to _wherever-the-hell _I wanted. Maybe I should book a holiday, go to Spain or something, just for a few days to clear my head. But a foreign country would mean I had plenty of me-time. So no. I'd stay in Cardiff where I was safe and where everything was so bori- familiar and there was nothing excit- dangerous in sight.

Just as I locked the front door and spun around to head out, I caught sight of a guy watching me from across the road, from where the TARDIS had last been parked. He wore a long grey coat- something I found completely off, since it looked very World War Two- and was really, _really _good-looking. I wanted to march over there and tell him to shove off so the TARDIS didn't squash him when the Doctor came back… before I realised that he wouldn't know what a TARDIS was and the Doctor coming back was more a matter of 'if' rather than 'when'.

Besides, he seemed harmless enough. The way he looked at me wasn't giving me the creeps, but it felt like he was trying to tell me something. Like he knew something I didn't, or like he was waiting specifically for me, or like he was asking me to come over and say hi. In a way, he reminded me of the girl from the library… and that didn't endear him to me. So I smiled, twirled my keys around my finger, and set off marching towards the nearest main road.

After a few minutes, I looked back and saw he was gone, completely disappeared. I felt a little shiver run up my spine but didn't focus on it too much, shrugging it off as an aftereffect of being dropped off by the Doctor. Six days. It was ridiculous how much those six days meant to me, how much I felt I'd changed. How much that stupid man had wormed his way into my head. _Damn _him. Since I met him, _everything _in my life was completely derailed!

So I went to the library, just as I planned, but I saw nothing of Cardiff on the way. I asked at the front desk for my bag, and retrieved it. Nothing had been touched. The ladies knew me well enough to have kept it safe- Gayle asked how I'd survived… I made up some excuse about being far enough out of town to be unaffected. Petting my hands, Gayle said the new shipment of Darwin books had come in and I nearly lost my mind as I wandered over to have a look.

Flicking through a biography of the naturalist and his family, I paused at a chapter detailing the events of his twenty-eighth birthday; namely, the fact that the largest storm all year occurred at the same time, and there had been sightings of men made out of ice walking through the blizzard. Apparently, Darwin spent the rest of his life regretting how drunk he'd been, and searched for years for any sign of the ice-men… there was a photograph of his birthday celebration, of Charles Darwin's sister holding a glass of sherry out to greet a guest… with a gasp, I realised that guest was me.

Oh, Lord. I was in a book. There was a blurred picture of dancing couples on the next page and the Doctor was standing in the background, staring towards the camera with a hard, unreadable expression. I traced a finger over his face and slammed the book shut, startling someone in the next aisle to shush me viciously. I stuck out my tongue in retaliation and slid the book back on the shelf, having indulged my narcissism enough for one day.

Sighing, I trailed my fingertips over the spines of the books and let my hand drop. I had it in my mind to head back home and made it halfway to the door before they sprung open of their own accord and the guy I'd seen outside my house walked in, took one look at me, and grinned so broadly I feared his face would break. I blinked in surprise, wondering with a flash of anxiety whether he'd followed me or this was just coincidence- something said _not- _and spotted the person who had entered directly behind the guy.

She was older than the last time I'd seen her, cleaner too. She looked very… warrior-ish, if that's a word. Well, it is now. She looked like the female cops from shows like CSI- all tough and sexy. Despite how different she looked when we weren't shivering and locked in a cage, Louie was still easily recognisable. And apparently, she recognised me too by the grin breaking out on her face.

"Kia! It's so good to see you again!" she cried, hurrying over and flinging her arms around me. I hugged her back a little awkwardly, trying to recall what year she said she'd been snatched from and- since I _assumed _she'd been dropped back as soon as possible- how old she'd be now, in 2009. "Tell me, how'd you go with the trip to Raxacorico-" The guy cleared his throat and Louie stopped instantly, her cheeks tinging a little pink. "Sorry. You're Old Kia, right, I should've realised-"

"I'm sorry," I interrupted, holding up my hand in confusion. "'Old Kia'?"

Louie flushed even darker and looked to her companion for help. He bestowed upon me what I'm sure was his most dashing smile- and believe me, I noticed- and held out his hand. "Captain Jack Harkness," he declared, shaking my hand warmly with a little quirky half-smile. "You'll have to forgive Lou, she's a little new when it comes to the Doctor."

"You know the Doctor?" I asked immediately, my curiosity inflamed as well as my trust. The ice was instantly broken; it helped that Jack just had one of those trust-me faces. Jack nodded and Louie beamed, clearly overjoyed at being part of this conversation. Realising that she was another gap in my memory, I pushed the Doctor out of my head and focussed on her. "You know me in the future," I guessed, smiling nervously when they both nodded, Jack seeming a little disappointed in something I couldn't place. "Well, this is a spinner."

"You're telling me," Louie muttered, still beaming. "After meeting you with the ice-men-"

"The Skith," I corrected out of habit more than anything.

Louie- or _Lou _as she was now called- didn't seem to hear me. "The Doctor dropped me back home, but nothing was really the same, you know? Then I met this guy who said he knew the Doctor, and there was this group of people called LINDA, and we met _another _alien and then, out of nowhere, you, Rose and the Doctor saved the day… oh, shit," Lou swore, looking at Jack's panicked face as I followed their silent conversation as best I could.

"None of that rings a bell," I announced, absolutely _overjoyed _at the fact. Jack picked up on my happiness and sighed, shaking his head as a warning to Lou to stop telling me things I shouldn't know. I didn't care; likelihood was, I'd forget half the things that happened here anyway.

Offering me his arm, Jack nodded to the door. "Shall we go somewhere safer?" he asked, more of Lou than of me, as I had no clue what he was talking about. But he seemed trustworthy and I kind of knew Lou, so I pushed any apprehension I might have had away. "So, how long have you been with the Doctor?" he asked as I let him lead me out. Lou flanked me, hovering just slightly, but they both seemed a little on edge and that put me on edge. The idea that dangerous alien activity might surround more people than the Doctor flickered across my mind and I pushed it back down.

"Six days- but really, I don't think I am, right now," I replied sullenly, sulking just a little. Jack shot me a sideways look and I sighed, shrugging my shoulders. "I think he kicked me off, but I _did _ask for it."

Chuckling, Jack steered us towards an inconspicuous little tourist-information building next to a pizza shop. Lou's face lit up and she skipped a little, while Jack looked very eager to get inside. "You were right," he said to me, his tone quiet and bordering on affection. Clearly, he knew me much better than I knew him. His eyes swept over me once and softened immeasurably; I didn't want to know what happened in my future to make him look so _sad. _I also didn't want to know what I'd been- or would be- right about.

We entered the lobby of an otherwise unassuming and empty tourism-themed business. I didn't see how this would be any safer than a library, and if the London-born Lou or the American Jack wanted a tour guide of Cardiff, well, they _had _practically kidnapped a local. A young, shy-ish sort of guy in a pink shirt stood up behind the desk and Jack sighed at Lou's enthusiasm.

"She's with the Doctor, Yan," Lou nodded, and the guy- Yan, it _had _to be short for something- broke into a smile.

"Of course. I'd know Kia anywhere- your file is so detailed," he said to me, and I baulked slightly, feeling just a little overwhelmed. Jack chuckled, squeezed my arm, and we all turned to follow Yan- seriously, _what _was that short for?- into the elevator. "It's great to see your first time here, Kia. You'll like it I'm sure."

"Ianto," Jack said a little warningly, and I giggled triumphantly.

At the three puzzled looks, I just shrugged. "Yan is short for Ianto. It was bugging me."

Ianto smiled shyly as Jack chuckled under his breath, _again, _apparently enjoying my resorting to collecting trivia as a way of not blurting out a million questions and freaking out at the fact that we were heading _down, _which translated directly into 'underground', a place I was not too fond of.

As the elevator doors slid open, I was greeted with the sight of an incredibly expensive, incredibly white, laboratory-looking setting with the proper Star Wars doors and everything. My mouth fell open and I had to rub my eyes a little, making sure I wasn't hallucinating or dreaming. Had my four days with the Doctor somehow entitled me to becoming part of a secret agency? Or was this prison? Had I been arrested and not known it? Would they experiment on me? They seemed nice enough but there were _so many things _that could go wrong now that I wasn't in public anymore. The thought only just occurred to me as the elevator slid shut and I saw the pin-pad ensuring that not just anyone could get out.

Lou bounced by my side, energetic and youthful and way too excited to have me feeling entirely comfortable, despite Jack mentioning the Doctor by name. Was I stupid to have followed them so blindly? "Welcome to Torchwood Three, Kia!" she announced, her grand arm gesture inviting me inside.

Quietly, I had a figurative heart attack.

* * *

**I hope the addition of Jack/Ianto/Louie/Torchwood isn't too sudden or unexpected… but I had to. Simply had to- imagine the reactions of the Doctor, Rose and Kia in the Empty Child when Jack shows up! Remember that this story is taking place in 2009, AFTER Doomsday, as Kia met the Doctor on the day of the Cybermen invasion, so Torchwood Three is up and running. I may have taken creative license with it and Jack's Torchwood have been operating on their own for a while now- completely separate from the Torchwood of Canary Wharf. So yeah… just felt that needed a little clarification.**

**Thanks to all who have put up with my lackadaisical updating, and who have stuck with Kia thus far. Hopefully you'll all be with us for many stories to come! See you all on Wednesday, 26****th**** September!**


	16. Don't Give Up

**Hooray, I'm on time this week! I'm a little bit proud of myself :)**

**So, without further ado (and no massive author's note) here is Chapter Sixteen. As always, enjoy!**

**-MS x**

* * *

**Sixteen: Don't Give Up**

Jack lead me through the Torchwood facility- a sort of mini-tour- and introduced me to his team. The place wasn't as big as I was expecting from the grand entryway; apparently, Jack had only been in charge for a couple of years, and thus hadn't had the time nor funding to make Torchwood Three a really big facility. Nonetheless, what I did see of it was wildly impressive and the archives, meticulously maintained by Ianto, were full of files on different species. Just looking at the rows upon rows of files on all the identified alien species to have visited Earth made me a little bit dizzy.

"Wow," I murmured, absently drifting towards the 'S' section to look for the Skith, and once I'd found them, off to the 'T' section to look for Time Lord. Jack let me take the file down with Ianto buzzing behind me about not messing it up because it took _forever _to amass this amount of information, and I sat cross-legged in the aisle to read. From what I'd seen of the Doctor and of Jack's reaction to him, I expected there to be pages upon pages of information.

Instead, there was just a single, cramped sheet of A4 paper that named the war I remembered the Doctor mentioning. The Last Great Time War had been fought between the Daleks and the Time Lords, primarily, and the prize was all of creation. It was funny, because there was no defined reason for the war ending, only that one day the war and every species fighting in it had disappeared from time and space, locked away forever behind the most powerful temporal force in history. The file didn't say who activated the Time Lock, or why, but it did mention that the only survivor was a Time Lord who travelled in a blue police box.

The Doctor.

Questions whirled in my mind and I flipped the page over, hoping for more information, but there was nothing but for a list of footnotes directing me to the Daleks, and the Doctor, who both had individual files and would hold more information. Jack and Ianto had backed off while I read, but looked up when I scrambled for my feet and dashed off towards the 'D' section. I had to see a Dalek. I had to know what had been so important, so dramatically necessary that two of the greatest species ever had to die for it. I wanted to know how the Doctor- and my mother- had survived when nobody else did.

"Kia," Jack's hand settled over the Doctor's file just as I reached up to take it down. It was thick and looked incredibly heavy- it was at least twice the size of the Bible, and crammed full of paper and sticky notes and photographs. I glared at Jack and huffed under my breath, grabbing instead the Dalek file from right beside the Doctor's. Something about seeing those two archived so close to one another made me vaguely ill.

"I can look at this one, right?" I asked Jack, a little bitter, as I sat down anyway and flipped through the pages. The Daleks, I decided, didn't look terribly scary. Like pepperpots with a plunger and a whisk. The sheer detail that the creator of this file had gone into with them made me re-evaluate though; they could kill with a single shot, had no concept of discrimination nor mercy, and were driven by a singular purpose; to kill anything that wasn't a Dalek. I could hardly imagine anybody standing up against an army such as the Daleks, and respected the Time Lords more for doing so. "All of creation and they stood in your way," I whispered to a photograph of the Dalek Emperor, his single eye seeming to cut right through my soul. There was a little voice recorder taped inside the file and, out of pure curiosity, I pressed it.

The noise that was emitted sent terror shooting through my entire body. Jack looked up at the sound of it and I froze, horrified. "EXTERMINATE!" a metallic voice ground, a voice so cold and full of so much rage I couldn't help but start to shake at the sound of it. "EXTERMINATE THE TIME LORDS!"

The watch jumped against my chest, a feeling of panic rising so fast that it was all I could do not to throw the file away. I slammed it closed and slid backwards on the floor, arms instantly going around my knees as I trembled and tried to bring my panic under control. I vaguely heard Ianto say something about coffee and watched through bleary eyes as he darted out the door, leaving me alone with Jack Harkness, who sat beside me with a sympathetic look.

"He said there was a war," I mumbled to my knees, not brave or steady enough to look up. "He said that everybody died. I just… I guess it didn't quite click until just now, seeing it written like that. There was a war and he lost everything, then I just…"

"Kia," Jack interrupted me gently, his hand squeezing my shoulder comfortingly. "You weren't to blame. How could you have possibly known the magnitude of the Time War?" I shrugged, feeling just a little better. But still so guilty. So terribly, incredibly guilty. The Doctor and I were both grieving, me for a parent and him for a planet, but did that give me the right to deny him the one thing I so desperately wanted from him? What amount of suffering on my part could give me the ability to deny him _hope? _I should have stayed on the TARDIS, I should have refused to leave until he explained everything and let me explain too, I shouldn't have let my anger rule my head…

"Will he ever come back?" I asked miserably, tearfully wiping my eyes and sniffling. Jack handed me a handkerchief with my name stitched on and I laughed through my tears, leaning against my new friend as though I'd done it a thousand times. The silent reassurance that one day, I'd meet Jack again and give him the handkerchief made me feel a million times better. "Thanks, Jack."

"No problem," he whispered back, and together we sat in a comfortable silence, me with my thoughts and Jack quietly giving me comfort, hope and reassurance. Ianto never came back with the coffee and it twigged that he'd left to give us the space we needed- Jack to comfort an old friend who didn't even know him yet. My stomach twisted with guilt for that too; imagine how he must have felt, watching me like this when he knew what- who- I'd become.

Hours, minutes, whatever, later and my dark mood had subsided into fierce determination to make sure I'd make my second chance- whenever it came- count and last. Slowly, I stood and Jack followed suit, raising an eyebrow when I took a step towards the scattered Dalek file, stopped, and deliberately turned around to walk the long way around to the exits. Why those things had the effect on me they did, I had no idea. Maybe it was the watch, the memory of a Time Lady, warning me away from the danger like she'd warned me when _she _was in danger. The photographs and sound recordings of the Daleks gave me the creeps… I was just grateful that I'd never have to meet one in person.

"So," I rasped, suddenly craving coffee- or a nice cup of calm-me-down tea- more than ever before. Cybermen? No problem. Skith? Piece of cake. Recorded memory of a Dalek? Not so easy. "How about that coffee?" I asked, clearing my throat as Jack nodded and held out his arm.

Jack's grin rose as I threaded my arm through his, walking just a step closer than before. It was as though I'd known him all my life, though it had been hours. I vaguely remembered not feeling quite so comfortable with the Doctor, or the Mysterious Girl, though the two of them hadn't given me much reason to trust either of them. I went with the Doctor on the word of the Mysterious Girl, whom I'd followed out of curiosity more than anything else. Jack I'd followed because of Louie, and because he knew the Doctor… which brought me back around to the idea that everything I'd gone through, everything I was still going through and would be going through, was the fault of the Mysterious Girl.

If I ever met her, I'd hug her in eternal gratitude then throttle her lifeless. The idea of violence put a little spring in my step and Ianto met Jack and I at the door to the archives, two steaming cups of coffee in his hands.

"Ah, the best coffee-boy in the country," Jack announced, gladly taking his coffee and giving a blushing Ianto a kiss on the cheek before hurrying off in pursuit of a dark-haired brunette briefly introduced as Gwen. I was a little more subdued in my thanks as Ianto and I stood in the open doorway, watching Jack bustle around the room like he owned it. Well… he kind of _did._

"You take white with none, right?" Ianto asked, eyebrow raised as I sipped the tea and instantly, the tannin spread throughout my body to relax me. One sip and the problems of the world could wait, I thought. How terribly British of me.

My eyebrows rose into my hairline as Ianto, whom I'd known for a few hours at the most, recited the way I liked my tea. "Is that on file?" I asked dryly, nodding my head back to the archives. I'd briefly spotted my name in the 'K' section but hadn't bothered trying to read it. Jack had freaked when I went for the Doctor's file, I hated to think what he'd do if I went for mine. I'd seen enough time-travel movies to know that messing with one's past or future was bad, so I left it.

Ianto's cheeks enflamed even further and he scuffed his shoe lightly. "No, I just… this isn't your first visit," he mumbled, almost inaudibly. I nodded, absorbing the information like water in a desert. Every little hint I had that I had a time-travelling future made my spirits start to rise; the more I knew I _had _a future, the better my present seemed.

"Am I with the Doctor?" I asked, curious more than anything. If anybody seemed likely to give me clues, it was Ianto or Louie- but she'd disappeared and I didn't want to get lost looking for her. So Ianto would have to do.

He shuffled nervously, shrugging. "Sometimes," he replied, somewhat cryptically. I wanted so much to ask what that meant but Jack intervened before I could, fixing Ianto with a hard stare until he mumbled a 'seeya' to me and darted off into the archives, figurative tail between his legs.

"Did you have to scare him?" I asked of my Torchwood tour-guide, who shrugged and nodded for me to follow him. I did so, feeling a little bit tired of being pulled one way then another, but figured I'd better get used to it until I could stand on my own two feet in this world of time-travellers and aliens. I was a baby in this brand new world, barely teething.

"We got a Code Nine hit on the TARDIS last night, and we've been following it ever since. I thought you should see where he's been," Jack explained, showing me a computer screen that showed the front of my flat. The time-stamp was around half-twelve last night, and the TARDIS materialised under the streetlamp. I watched myself step out, the doors slam shut- I winced, still hearing the finality of the _click _as they locked against my return- and the police box disappear. The past me waited in the snow for a moment or two- I was waiting to see if he was really gone, if I'd really done it- before storming off inside and slamming the door.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" I asked a little sharply, not needing the reminder. Jack just kept watching the screen with a little longing stare.

"No," he replied, snapping out of his trance to speed through the tape, bringing it an hour forward. Jack superimposed a map over the top, showing me that the Doctor had materialised about three streets away from my flat, and had left the TARDIS in the morning, around the same time I'd left the flat. "He's watching you," Jack whispered, sounding just a little bit surprised. "He's making sure you're okay. I had no idea it went this far back…"

"What?" I asked sharply, bringing Jack around. He gave me a sad little sideways smile and chucked me under the chin. He reminded me of the Doctor then, the young man with the ancient eyes, as if he'd lived a thousand times over and had very little to show for it apart from memories and missing friends.

"When I meet you, Kia, I'll have no idea who you are. It'll be a younger me you meet. But I remember that the first thing I noticed about the Doctor wasn't how old he was, or that he was an alien, or that he was smart. It was that he protected you relentlessly. Time and time again he proved that despite the danger, despite how bitterly the two of you might be fighting, despite how loudly you protested… your safety was his top priority. I had no idea it went so far back for you two…" I was silent, with absolutely no idea what to say. Jack gave me an indulgent grin and shrugged as he stood up straight. "It almost makes me regret all that flirting."

"Almost?" I echoed dryly, unable to help the grin in return. He really was ridiculously handsome and suddenly, all my doubts and fears were gone. The Doctor's return was now firmly a matter of 'when' rather than 'if', and my heart didn't weigh so heavily in my chest.

Taking my hand almost instinctively, Jack lead me to the doors as I waved back at Ianto and Louie, both of whom I'd see in the future. That was a certainty, and boy, did it feel good. "It'll be a while, for you," Jack revealed in the elevator, shrugging sheepishly when my face fell. "There's a good few years with the Doctor in it for you."

Just like that, I was happy again. I was starting to think I'd need to invest in an emotional stabiliser other than tea, since the effects of that were short-lasting and frankly not strong enough. "Jesus, this whole thing is a headache," I complained, releasing Jack's hand to rub my temples. He laughed loudly, only serving to make me more petulant, and lead me to the Blaidd Drwg Bakery, five streets from my flat and where I had worked a few years back. The building was half destroyed by the Cybermen, still covered in warning tape and charred walls. I shuddered a little and wanted to make a smart-arse remark to Jack, but he just shrugged apologetically and looked so sad I felt my breath catch.

"Think you can navigate your way home from here?" he asked, holding my hands so tightly I feared he'd never let me go. I nodded, still breathless, with a little lump in my throat. Jack looked like he'd never see me again and the thought scared _me _as it played havoc with the wobbly smile trying to stay on his face. "Just remember, don't give up on him. When everything seems like it's lost, the Doctor won't let you down." And he pulled me close to kiss my forehead before he backed away quickly, waving and turning away so fast I almost missed the heartbroken expression.

"Jack!" I called, stopping him before he could get too far. Slowly, I turned him back around and hugged him round the middle, the top of my head barely making his shoulder. He squeezed back and I felt his chest heave; I wondered what else he knew of my future, or of his own, that could possibly make him so terribly sad. "Thanks, for everything. I can't wait to meet you… and please, flirt all you like," I grinned, delighting in the fact that he grinned back at me and seemed a little lighter on his feet as he hurried away. At the last possible moment, he spun back around and held out his arms, sending an air-hug in my direction.

"Ask me to dance!" he called, and then he was gone. I waved a farewell and wandered for home, whistling a happy tune as I went. My future was still shadowy, but I knew the direction it would take. The Doctor's path and mine were entwined and there was _nothing _he could do about it; nothing would make me give it up.

* * *

** And there we go! Unfortunately, that's the end of Jack/Louie/Ianto for the time being... but, there's a little hint of what the future holds for Kia. And her future is with the Doctor- of course it is, or we wouldn't have a story, would we?**

**Points to anyone who spots the Bad Wolf reference :) (though I may have just given it away... oops!)**

**So, I'll see everybody on the 3rd October!**

**Love,**

**- MS x**


	17. Can't Stay Mad Forever

**Edit: What do you guys think of the new cover? It took forever to find the right photos- do you know how few there are of Chris that I could plausibly use? Also, I've seen that Angels Take Manhattan has aired, as there are fics posted about it. I, for one, am not looking forward to this Saturday in Australia. I don't wanna say goodbye to the Ponds, not forever. "Heartbreaking end"? **

**Moffat, I swear, if you've split Amy and Rory up I will hunt you down...**

**Right, anyway- enjoy the Seventeenth Chapter!**

* * *

**Seventeen: Can't Stay Mad Forever**

Meeting Louie again- hearing what happened to her after she met us- had helped considerably. And Jack Harkness… whoever he was, would be- whatever- had given me hope that things wouldn't stay so distant forever. His assurance that this wouldn't be the first, nor the worst, thing the Doctor and I fought about only strengthened my resolve to apologise and get things back on track. The hints of the future I could have, the adventures and the friends I'd make- Jack himself, apparently- made me suddenly long for the TARDIS. I had kept the letter- the last correspondence between the two of us- close, the instructions clear and the message more so.

_Don't tell the Doctor about me, not yet. Messing with timelines is dangerous, and when he comes back for you it will be a while before we meet again. If you find yourself unable to avoid mentioning me, don't use specifics- just tell him I'm a friend from the future, and he'll understand you can't say anymore. I'm sorry to put this on you after meeting you for the first time… but, well… you get used to this kind of thing when you're around the Doctor for long enough. Whatever you do, don't mention Torchwood, either, will you? You know what, let's just make ourselves a golden rule; no details. Deal?_

_I can't say much more than this, only that I'm looking forward to meeting you again. It will happen, no matter how bad you think things are, just know that the Doctor will always remember you. Until the next-_

_Jack._

I'd read these words a thousand times in the last week, over and over again, and each time I opened the light green envelope it felt like a fresh rush of hope. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the letter was like my nicotine, and it was never more than a few hours between readings. The letter, and the handkerchief- I'd kept it, promising myself to give it to Jack when I met him again, so he could give it to me- gave me hope for the future.

But the postscript made me laugh, and wonder, the most.

_P.S. When you ask me to dance- and please do- think Tina Turner and Jitterbug, baby._

It didn't surprise me, somehow, that Jack knew my favourite song was _River Deep, Mountain High._ Or that he knew I knew the jitterbug. My mother had been absolutely mad about the 1950-60 era, the songs and the dances and, though she never said it, the whole _flower power _thing, and had played Tina Turner to death when I was growing up. Beyond that, it was simply a _good _song. I remembered the dance classes when I was eight; Mum had adored the skirt-shirt-and-necktie look, a rather obscure fashion choice but it had always suited her.

A small voice in the back of my mind drew my attention to the watch and I forced it away. I refused to entertain the notion that my mother wasn't human- I knew her as human, and I intended to remember her the way she had been, the last time I saw her. The idea that she was a total stranger didn't sit well in my stomach, so I kept myself busy to keep myself distracted. I forced my tumultuous stomach to keep some food down. I swept the kitchen floor… again. I polished the windows from the inside and out. I dusted the T.V. I scrubbed the bathroom tiles.

Again.

Most days went by like this; at first, I found any little excuse to stay out of the flat, then finding any excuse to stay _in. _I reorganised my meagre collection of DVD's. Twice. I read fourteen books in three days. I don't remember sleeping much, but it didn't seem to affect me too much. I spent hours just watching the watch, waiting for it to do _something _to justify everything I'd learned.

It must have been late at night when I heard the TARDIS returning. Though it had been exactly a week since I last heard that wonderful sound, I remembered it instantly. I didn't rush straight out the door though some part- well, _most parts-_ of me wanted to. Instead, I peeked through the curtains like a snooping neighbour and watched the blue box appear beneath a streetlight on the other side of the street. The Doctor didn't emerge, so I let the curtain fall back in place and forced myself to stay inside.

I wondered what he'd say if I went over there. If I were the one to make the first move to heal the wound. I was sorry for shouting at him, I really was, and I was especially sorry that we'd ended up fighting to the extent that we had. More than anything, I was sorry for the way I'd handled things. Oh, I was still mad that he'd taken the watch, and that he'd stayed away for so long. But how long could I stay mad?

But- and that was a pretty big but- the term 'forgive and forget' only worked in theory. I understood why the Doctor took the watch, and I forgave his _intentions… _but his _actions _were a whole other story. No matter what Jack Harkness or Louise Owens said.

Stubbornly and determinedly, I kicked off my shoes and grabbed a book, and another cup of tea, stubbornly determined to not go over there. I may have been sorry, and I may have missed him terribly, but I was not the only one in the wrong.

It was when I realised that I'd read the same sentence seven times that I gave up putting it off. Tossing the book aside, I peeked out the window again and found the TARDIS still sitting under the streetlamp. Snow had begun to fall and I watched the flakes flutter down for a moment or two, gathering my nerve and steeling my spine. It was now or never. I wasn't sure how long he'd wait for me to change my mind, and I didn't want to risk losing him forever.

Grabbing my keys, I locked the flat behind me- security reasons only, I planned to return for the rest of the night out of principle if nothing else- and hurried across the road. I should have grabbed a coat; it was freezing outside. I should have grabbed shoes too, I realised, as my feet began to go numb. But it was too late; I was too lazy, frankly, to go back and get them, as I stood outside the TARDIS and prayed the alien within would still be lurking around the console room.

I knocked. Firm and friendly, I think. It was a good knock regardless. I jigged from foot to foot, freezing my toes off and counting to ten. If he hadn't answered by then, I'd go back inside. When I reached _nine, _the TARDIS doors swung open and a stone-faced, leather-jacket-wearing man leaned against the frame.

"I'm sorry," I said, first to break the silence.

His expression barely changed as he looked at me impassively. "Me too." No emotion in his tone, either. I began to feel a little nervous, that maybe I'd damaged our fledgling friendship beyond repair.

"I shouldn't have overreacted," I added, just to be safe.

He shrugged, only his shoulders moving. My heart began to sink. "I shouldn't have pried. You were justified, I was curious." He was defending me. Oh, the stupid alien was defending me, as if he were completely in the wrong and I were a saint. I'd made my mistakes too, been a little too dramatic. He had no right to shoulder all the guilt. I shrugged this time, feeling the need to lift the dark mood. The tension was killing me.

"Nosy, more like," I smiled to show the joke, and was rewarded by a twitching lip. Either a grimace or a smile, but I'd take what I could get. "I told you the watch was Mum's," I continued, folding my arms across my chest and giving him a bit of a hard stare. I couldn't stay mad forever.

"Sorry," he was smiling now, a little sheepish. The tension had definitely lifted and I allowed myself to relax enough to shake my head and sigh at him, exasperated and playing it up to an over the top level.

"What for now?" I grumbled.

He was grinning at me now. Good. No more sulky Time Lord, which means we could start putting this fight behind us. I didn't like owing people and I especially didn't like fighting with the people I owed. "Not listening," he replied, as I just shrugged again. Like this was nothing for either of us, as if we fought and made up every day. I had a feeling that with his nosy, devil-may-care attitude against my private, stay-out-my-room one, we'd be fighting a few more times. Jack Harkness' reaction to _this _fight was clue enough.

"S'alright."

There was a pause. I had no clue what to say and it was obvious that he didn't either. I imagine he didn't often have to come back and face this stage of an argument before- I had an idea that he'd just take off and leave things unfinished, leave the other person hanging for the rest of their lives. I was suddenly so, so grateful to the watch for being mine so I had the chance to tell him I was sorry.

A slight breeze picked up from the south and I shivered as the snow was whipped up and touched my skin. The Doctor straightened up as if he just noticed how little I was actually wearing against the weather, and that I was still standing out _in _the weather.

"You're cold," he stated, eyes wide and shaking his head at me.

"Observant, Martian," I bit back dryly, smiling as he gave me a pained frown.

"I'm not from- never mind. You coming in?" He kicked the door open and moved aside, a clear invitation if I'd ever heard one. I stepped out of the snow, grateful for that at least. The wind was off my skin and being in the warmth of the TARDIS only made me feel colder. I really, really wished I'd worn shoes.

"Thanks," I whispered, shivering worse. It was that strange sensation one has of being in cold weather and slowly adjusting, then going somewhere warm and realising just how cold one actually was. Yeah. That was me, slowly thawing out in the TARDIS console room. "I- I've got a few questions," I changed the topic, feeling quite self-satisfied and in charge. The Doctor didn't seem to mind me doing so, and I figured this was his way of telling me he was truly sorry for poking around the watch.

"I'll bet. Me too," he replied, leaning against the banister as I scuffed my bare feet against the metal grating. I watched his gaze begin to travel down and, desperate to stall him from seeing how much I'd worked myself up fussing over whether I should come over or not, I walked up to the console itself and headed for the jump-seat.

"Right, let's get started shall we?" I called, my voice taking on a bit of an in-command edge. The Doctor caught my elbow before I could sit down and gently tugged me towards the corridors.

"Library. It's warmer... where are your shoes?" he asked, voice sharp. He sounded like a concerned parent and if that wasn't enough to get my goat up, the fact that I'd forgotten my shoes in the first place made me irritated with myself. Unfortunately, it was the usual thing that if I was irritated with myself, I would take it out on whoever was unlucky enough to be closest. Seeing as my closest potential victim happened to be the Doctor and I didn't feel like fighting with him and being booted out into the snow again, I let it go.

I looked down at my bare- and red with cold- feet, feigning surprise. I don't know whether he fell for my act or not, but I played it out nonetheless. "Forgot," I replied simply, with a shrug to indicate it didn't matter. Who needed feet anyway? It wasn't like I may have to run for my life in the future.

The Doctor gave me an incredulous look, shaking his head. "You _forgot _shoes?" he mocked, which only made me scowl and hurry up, which had next to no effect seeing as he could walk so much faster than I could without even trying. "But it's snowing out there! Kia!" he reprimanded me, walking alongside me now and easily matching my longest strides, barely even extending his. I felt like a child trying to outrun a parent, and I hated that feeling.

"Shut it. You said library?" I asked, again keeping the conversation going where I wanted it to go. The Doctor nodded and lead the way.

The library took my breath away. It had when I'd come here before, but then I'd been much too preoccupied with being a rotten brat to notice how amazing it truly was. The lighting was wrought-iron candle holders and a huge chandelier hanging from the roof. The swimming pool that took up a majority of the first level was perfectly still and reflected the lighting back at us, making the room shimmer through a fog of golden light and sweet-smelling smoke. Comfortable recliner chairs were dotted around the walls, a pair of floating mats drifted on the water, and the shelves stretched up a good thirty metres, every inch crammed with books of all shapes and sizes. Forgetting everything else for the moment, I gravitated as if magnetised to the nearest shelf and ran my fingertips over the colourful spines, my eyes wide and my heart already falling in love with this room.

The Doctor hadn't followed me in but he barely crossed my mind. The books were all the distraction I needed; the TARDIS could explode around me and I'd hardly notice. I even began to feel less cold, probably because the room was lit with fire which therefore rose the temperature. I circled the Olympic-sized pool slowly and had barely made it along one length before the Doctor returned with a blanket and a pair of socks, both of which he shoved at me and wordlessly crossed to a pair of armchairs tucked away in a nook between two shelves. I followed, curling into one with the socks on my feet and the blanket tucked around me snugly.

"Thanks," I said, still breathlessly admiring the library. I'd never seen a room full of more beauty and temptation; this was my idea of heaven. I could quite easily make this my home, if truth be known. The Doctor said nothing, apparently content to let me stare and blink and admire the stunning setting. He'd suggested it, probably because he guessed this would distract me from shouting at him. Although, this was technically where the real trouble had started. "One thing I don't understand," I murmured, not looking at the alien sitting across from me. "Is how this watch can contain a pers- a _Time Lord_?"

His deep intake of breath had me settling down for a long story.

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**Only a short, sort-of filler chapter, because unfortunately this signals the beginning of the end for this story. Four weeks to go, people! I'll be done on Halloween! But, good news is, I've got the sequel almost half done, which is good news- I should be ready to post it around the start of December, hopefully, so you won't be without the weekly updates for too long.**

**Also, I think I found the perfect Doctor/Kia song, by the marvellous Katie Melua. It's called "No Fear of Heights". I would highly suggest looking it up/reading the lyrics, as it really does suit their relationship, even at this level. It's kinda a quirky song, but the lyrics are what got me sucked in.**

**MS x**


	18. Tell Me Who I Am

**Eighteen: Tell Me Who I Am**

The Doctor's expression was drawn and tired, as though he really didn't want to tell me but felt he had no choice. He honestly didn't, truth be known. I'd berate the truth- the whole truth, and nothing but- out of him.

"Listen carefully, and don't interrupt. I'm not saying this twice. That watch is more than just an ordinary watch. In the future, roughly three thousand years in yours, there is a piece of machinery known as a Chameleon Arch. It was invented by a race of very advanced… individuals and while these people were destroyed by war, their technology didn't die. It's similar to the Chameleon Circuit that disguises a time-travelling ship to match the destination period to avoid easy detection-"

"I'm guessing yours is a little wonky?" I quipped, earning a glare that had little to no effect on me. Probably because the malice I'd seen before was gone, replaced by an exasperated glint that only had me grinning.

"What did I say about interruptions?" the Doctor shook his head and I mimed buttoning my lips. He waited until my hands were concealed beneath the blanket once again before he continued, a faraway look entering his eyes as he spoke. "The Arch can be used to physically alter DNA. For example, a Time Lord can become a human being... but their original identity must be kept somewhere, ready to be restored when the object of containment is broken. In this case, if you open the watch. Being a species predominantly associated with time, our carriage of choice is a fob watch."

I fished out the watch, for the first time taking notice of the swirling patterns engraved over both sides. My thumb rested on the catch and I hesitated to press it, a feeling of dread curling in my stomach. "Are you sure this is one?" I asked quietly, unable to quite wrap my head around the fact that the pendant I'd been wearing all my life was from another planet. "Mum never said where she got it, just that I had to have it..."

"Are you sure you were born on Earth?" the Doctor countered, eyebrows raised. "The Arch does have the ability to invent entire life stories for those who use it, to allow easy integration into another society. They are very strictly controlled, usually unable to be used unless the pilot of the ship is in severe danger or has approval from the Shadow Proclamation."

Giving him an incredulous look, I struggled to think of anything that could confirm my place of birth was the planet Earth. I struggled with the thought, to be honest, wrestled with sheer disbelief and mounting horror to finally admit that I had no proof. I had a birth certificate, but they could be forged. "You think this watch," I started, leaving the thoughts of my own cloudy origins for a slightly safer, less brain-bending topic, "contains a Time Lord... _entity. _Is there any way of telling for real without opening it?"

The Doctor didn't seem phased, or even surprised, by my sudden change of topic. He pulled an identical watch out of his pocket and tossed it across to me; I studied the patterns, which were completely the same. Not a single deviation whatsoever. "That is a seal of protection written in Old High Gallifreyan- my language. To the changed one, the containment unit becomes a vital part of their life. They cannot bare to be without it."

"Like me," I murmured. He nodded and I dropped the two watches onto my lap, the chain of the real one- Mum's one- wrapped around my fist. I still feared losing it, now more than ever, even though my perception of it was completely altered. "Sorry. Go on, Doctor."

He nodded and continued, me determined to let him finish now. "There was a war, Kia. A war spanning throughout time and space, tearing the fabric of creation itself. My people fought an evil greater than any evil ever seen before... and they died, taking the evil and the war with them. They disappeared from time and space to become nothing but a myth, a story whispered among the stars. I was the only one... I thought I was the only one. And then I met you, and you reminded me so much of someone I used to know, and you had that watch. You insist it isn't yours... but how do you know?"

"Because of my mother," I responded in a whisper, tearful now at trying to imagine his pain and feeling stabs of guilt for having reacted the way I did. This talk, I rationalised, would have been handy in the beginning instead of after things had gone so far. "She's the one with the strange memories, the one who appeared out of nowhere. She arrived in the middle of the night, wearing nothing but a tattered red robe, this old watch and heavily pregnant with me."

The Doctor stared at me, and I closed my eyes, the information slowly coming together. My mother _was _an alien. She hadn't come from England at all; but from another planet. She must have run away from the war, with her baby- me. She was the girl from the story she always told me, and the city in the bubble... had I been dreaming of the Doctor's homeland- _my homeland- _all my life and not known it? Mum fled the war, used the Arch and became a human. She had me... "You shouldn't be alive, Kia," the Doctor murmured gently, just as I made the same conclusion.

"Altering her DNA should have killed me, shouldn't it?" I whispered. The thought chilled me, but I pushed it aside as roughly as I could. I had much, much bigger issues to worry about. What were the chances, and tell me honestly, of having an alien mother and yet being completely human? Then, to top it all off, another alien- who just happened to be _the only other of the – _my_- species still alive- _drops out of nowhere. My life, the last few weeks, was an utter mess. If I had to be frank, I didn't mind as much as I thought I would.

"I'm sorry."

Shaking my head, I looked at the stillness of the water and tried to gather myself. All my strength, my courage, was coming into play. It had to, because I couldn't break down and cry. That wasn't going to change the fact that the watch I'd worn as a simple memoir was actually a prison for my real mother. "Am I a Time Lord too, then?" I asked suddenly, the silence shattering as the question rose.

Looking uncomfortable, the Doctor just shrugged. "You never were," he replied, sounding a little unsure even as he said it. "You took your first breath as a human. Technically, you've never been anything else." We shared an unspoken look then, his tinged with a certain sad disappointment and mine with a lost confusion. My mother was non-human. I was _technically _human. "The watch is your mother's," the Doctor surmised quietly, as I nodded in agreement. "And your mother..." I bowed my head, the sentence going unfinished and sounding loud in the silence of the library. "Whoever is trapped inside has nowhere to go; she will perish."

"So she just has to stay locked up forever?" I mumbled, shaking my head. That didn't seem fair to me, not in the slightest. Mum- whoever she really was, was a stranger, but I refused to call her anything but _mum- _had already locked her real self away for twenty-three years, my entire lifespan and then some. It didn't seem fair that I got to be free, seeing the stars and the most amazing things as I was, while she had to stay in a tiny little watch and simply tag along for the ride. Some small part of me hoped that somehow, I might be able to get my mother back in some small way. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

The Doctor didn't answer for the longest time. I began to grow nervous at the dark and serious expression on his face, the same one he'd worn just before realising how we would defeat the Cybermen. I had a feeling that whatever his answer would be, I would have trouble swallowing it. "There is a slim chance that, with a bit of hokery-pokery, that the two of you could... _fuse."_

I frowned, a tension headache blossoming. I seemed to be spending most of my time lately frowning in disapproval; I had a feeling that things wouldn't be getting any better any time soon. "If I... _became _whoever's in the watch... wouldn't I be becoming my own mother? Mucho paradoxo." He snickered slightly at my poor Spanish, but I'd never pretended to have any linguistic skills whatsoever. Sure I could swear a bit in Welsh and French, thanks to high school, but other than that I was hopeless.

Sobering quickly, the Doctor's serious attitude was infectious and despite how confused and lost I still felt, I was eager to pretend I could keep up and understand what was going on. So far, the most I'd managed to swallow was the fact that Mum was an alien trapped inside a watch I wore around my neck. Anything after that... still a tiny bit stuck. "No, not necessarily. Your mother was, technically, a human when she had you. That watch contains whoever she _was _before having you. You would become a mix of whoever she _was, _plus your own identity_, _technically a whole new person." The explanation meant nothing to me, as I could only think of one thing. If I was technically going to become a 'whole new person'...

"So," I croaked, trying very, very hard to force a smile on my face even though all I wanted to do was curl up and desperately sort myself out before even thinking of trying to help someone else. "What happens to _this _me, Doctor?"

* * *

**Okay, now THIS is a filler chapter.** Just needed to get the information/explanations out there. Now we know exactly what's up with the watch/Kia's mum/Kia herself. Hopefully this clears up a few questions... there really isn't much else to say down here, so as a treat, you get a short author's note. Mainly because Heartbeat is on in the background and I'm too engrossed to thin properly :)

See you all on **17th** October!


	19. Reflections

**Things are (sadly) starting to wind up now. Only two more chapters to go- that's right. TWO. MORE. CHAPTERS. Two weeks. Then that's it. Halloween is the last day… I'm a little sad now that I come to think of it. A whole year of my life, right here… ahem. I guess it was pretty predictable the way things would play out with Kia and her watch. But I've never pretended to be writing anything else; I started with the idea of writing the Doctor Who Cliches and the human-turned-Time-Lady seemed the easiest/most fun. **

**As always, enjoy!**

* * *

**Nineteen: Reflections**

The library was quiet as ever. Silent, in fact. Not surprising, seeing as I was the only one in it. My wrist-watch said it was somewhere around three in the afternoon but I felt so, so tired. Being in this ship was really messing with my sense of night and day, though I suppose it didn't matter. I could sleep as long as I wanted, whenever I wanted, and wake up to it being a brand new day. As long as the Doctor didn't object to running on my body's clock, that is. I considered returning to my flat across the road for a nap but couldn't bring myself to move.

The Doctor had left some hours earlier, shuffling off deeper into the ship mumbling about research and I had no idea, and no compulsion, to go and find him. I didn't want a new adventure just yet anyway; I needed the time alone, the space to just think. I had instructions to not venture too far away from the library, and not to read anything published in my future, not that I could read and truly concentrate in any case.

My head was buzzing long after the revelations the post-apology conversation I'd had with the Doctor had been... well, revealed. I was still grappling with some parts, but I think I had it down pat enough to surmise it into a bite-sized, easy-to-swallow, nutshell of an explanation for... everything. I knew and had mostly accepted four things for certain, though not without a fair amount of difficulty and a few secret tears or two.

My mother was an alien from the planet... Gallifrey? Yeah, Gallifrey. There was a war and she, wanting to protect her unborn baby (me), turned herself into a human and hid.

Her _other self, _the Time Lord... Lady... self, was compressed and hidden in an old fob watch that I now wore firstly as a memoir, but now as something much more precious.

My mother's untimely passing thirteen years earlier had left the Lady with very few options. One of them was stay locked away forever, the other was be freed and dissolve into nothing, and the final option was hope the Doctor could tweak things enough to allow her to possess me, seeing as I shared a biological link with her original self.

If that happened, the me I knew as me would surely die.

As you could probably guess, the thing I was wrestling with the most was Number Four. At twenty-two (and a bit) years old, I had never entertained thoughts that I could die shortly, not before meeting the Doctor at least. I had dreams of being _something _special, even if I didn't know what. I knew I could have been so much more, but things had changed very rapidly. The Lady in my mother's watch would die, or be trapped forever, without my help. I was never the kind of person to sit by and allow that sort of thing to occur, so of course I wanted to help, but at the cost of my own life?

Who could blame me for being a little selfish in that respect? I had had a taste of what life could truly be, I didn't want to lose that just yet. Technically, I knew I wouldn't die in the complete sense of the word. But I would be changed beyond recognition, and might not even be me enough to enjoy what I had now. The flat, the mortgage, the job, the classes, the "friends" I rarely saw... that was the life I'd been living, and it had been reliably good to me as far as I could recall. A little dull at times, but reliable and safe. The Doctor certainly spiced things up a bit, admittedly, but I was still me enough to enjoy a good cup of tea and a few hours of doing nothing.

Would I even like tea if I was someone else? Or would I be like the Doctor, never staying still long enough to really enjoy the little things? I loved to stop and smell the figurative roses. Would the New-Me do the same? Or simply crush the garden in the rush to do other, bigger, more exciting things?

I had never put much thought to how I would die. But... dying in place of someone I love- hang on, that's Twilight. Oh dear Lord, what was happening to me? Was I that frazzled and stressed out that I resorted to quoting, of all things, _Twilight? _The heel of my hand made a decidedly loud thud against my forehead and did nothing to erase that sinful quote from my mind. It only made the tension headache worse, and the quote louder. As much as I despise its' origins, that line did sum up my situation. The point still stands. Dying in the place of someone I love seemed like a good way to go, if I had to go.

I hoped the Doctor, wherever he was, was trying to come up with an alternative. I didn't hold out much hope for him finding one, because if he'd thought there was another way, I'm positive he would never have mentioned the fact that I'd have to die to free the Lady. Why worry me unnecessarily?

My jittery body demanded movement and I obeyed like a puppet, woodenly throwing off the blanket and starting to walk around the pool. The water looked inviting, though I had never been a strong swimmer. I wonder if the world would look different from under the surface? It didn't look all that deep... but I didn't want to test my luck. Apparently, I wasn't supposed to be alive in the first place. I wasn't about to tempt fate by jumping into a pool; I'd leave that to the experts.

Barely two steps later, another issue had taken over my mind. Long-forgotten and much more tame than any of the issues I had amassed since, I returned to worrying over what I would write for my thesis. I had a friend with a time machine, and I was a year into my doctorate in history. I'd already met Charles Darwin... who had been drunk at the time, but I still shook his hand and put him to bed. I listed all the people I'd love to meet and sorted them alphabetically, then by preference, then by year of birth, year of death...

It calmed me down, making and shuffling that list. I liked lists; they kept me organised.

I turned swiftly at the sound of the door opening, and watched the Doctor slowly make his way to me. The pace he kept didn't fill me with hope; quite the opposite, in fact. Dread curled and settled like a stone as I swallowed thickly and tried to put on a calm facade.

"It's possible," was the first thing he said. I didn't jump to the happy conclusion, sensing there was a _but _to come. There always is. "You didn't have an individual consciousness when your mother changed the both of you, so yours melded with hers. That's good, it will make things... easier. That was the good news. The mildly good news is she's already bonding herself to you too. I've noticed it once or twice, that you somehow know things you shouldn't know, or shouldn't guess easily. The bad news is, every time she takes over your mind, she weakens you, like a disease. I don't know what will happen if you try to assimilate the energy completely; as you are now, you could never handle it. Perhaps if you remain in contact with the watch for a while, you may become somewhere near ready. When we finally try, either it will work and change you, or you become a combination of the two, which would fry your circuits and kill you."

"Either way I die," I muttered bitterly, trying not to feel guilty at the stricken look that passed over the Doctor's face. This wasn't his fault, I knew, but I had to take my anger out on someone. He just happened to be the closest victim, unfortunately for him. He chose to ignore my irritation and smile apologetically.

"Not necessarily," he murmured, and a tiny flicker of hope began to appear in my stomach. "I need more time. I've never heard of this happening before... but if there's one thing I am, it's clever. So clever that I might actually be able to do it."

Without thinking, I flung my arms around his neck and hugged him for all I was worth. Somewhere in the bottom of my mind, I tallied up all the times I had touched him first and willingly, this being the third or fourth. Usually, it was him reaching out for me, but this time, I couldn't help myself. If he could both save the Lady and save me, I would be forever in his debt. I hated owing people, but if he accomplished this, I would gladly owe him for the rest of my lifetime and beyond.

We were broken apart by my stomach rumbling, and I blushed as I looked down at it in surprise. I hadn't eaten much for the last few days, and apparently even my small appetite was piqued. Grinning at me, the Doctor lead me to the library doors and along corridors I'd never seen before. I was grateful he was leading me or I'd be lost as anything, unable to do anything but waste away and pray someone found me. We stopped outside a door that turned out to lead to a kitchen.

"Take anything you want. I'm not overly well-stocked, but you should be able to find something. I'll be in the library if you want me," the Doctor nodded to the cupboards and I hummed a thank you as I dove for the food, hungrier now than I could ever recall being in my life. His leaving barely distracted me from my task as I searched and grabbed anything that looked edible and delicious. Vaguely, I recall hearing the Doctor chuckle and mumble something about _insatiable apes _but the comment washed right over my head. I had food; everything else be damned.

In the presence of the heavenly delicacy known as Nutella, everything paled. The problem of the watch which still hung around my neck- I felt more aware of it now, more conscious that it was there. I considered for a moment taking it off, but the thought of losing it somewhere in the TARDIS had me shivering with dread and rethinking my ideas instantly. Still, having it so close to me now that I knew what it really was had me alert for any changes in myself. The Doctor had mentioned that the Lady and I were linked, and had connected; I could recognise these times now, in myself.

Way back with the Cybermen- I remembered it vividly, despite the time tha had elapsed between then and now- when the Doctor and I were trapped in the control centre. Although I'd seen the building just once from the outside, and only very briefly, I had remembered there was a fire-escape. I wasn't sure if that was me or something the Lady had influenced, but I couldn't recall seeing that fire-escape from outside.

And then with the Skith. Was the Lady to blame for my memory loss where they were concerned? I couldn't remember much after being taken to the warehouse; maybe she had taken over my mind and controlled me, to the point where I couldn't remember it at all? That was entirely possible, I told myself, though the Doctor would have to confirm it. I still wasn't sure I could trust anything in my own head anymore; I still had flashes of a snowy, icy planet being destroyed and a ship hurtling through time and space, all images of the Skith that they had given me. I could picture a burnt orange sky and red grass, from the picture Mum drew, like I had seen it before.

I couldn't sort out whether half the things in my head were _mine, _the Lady's, or the Skith. As far as headaches go, I might be so bold as to say this was shaping up to be one of the worst I'd ever had.

* * *

**I have a proposition for you guys… I'm considering writing a side-series to **_**this **_**series, called "Lost in Time". ****It'd about Kia meeting some of the earlier Doctors****, because there's a scene full of spoilers in which she's going to need to know his past. **

**So, would a Kia-in-Classic-Who be something you'd be willing to read? I'd probably focus on the Tom Baker – Paul McGann, as my resources for Doctors 1-3 are severely limited. Please, give me a shout if you'd be interested! **

**Next Update: 24th October.**


	20. Take Me Away

**Twenty: Take Me Away**

A month had crawled by, with me and the Doctor in the library every spare moment we had, between me sorting out my affairs and the Doctor taking us to his 'favourite places on Earth', a restriction I placed on our travels since I didn't feel ready enough to face the _universe. _I was barely used to the fact that anywhere in time was readily accessible; the idea of anywhere in space overwhelmed me a little.

Through all my travels into Cardiff, I never ran into Jack Harkness or Louie Owens again. I called into the tourist office once or twice, hoping to find Ianto at the desk, but there had been a stranger manning it and the word 'Torchwood' just got me raised eyebrows and confused looks. It was like they didn't exist- despite my curiosity, I didn't go digging for them. They still had the Doctor as Code Nine and me as Code Eight; I wasn't going to tempt fate.

So, between seeing this-and-that and meeting so-and-so, I was researching the Doctor's… _our…_ species, occasionally having my questions answered, more often having more questions than answers. He was desperately searching for a solution to my problem, trying to see if there was any mention whatsoever in any text of my situation. With every failed venture, the tension rose and we found ourselves snapping over the simplest of things, the most insignificant of topics quickly escalating into flaming rows.

And for all that, we were still no closer to finding a resolution.

The TARDIS doors creaked as I snuck out, feeling the sting of Cardiff's early-morning coolness hitting my skin. As much as being in the ship made me happy, I needed the fresh air. I must have been sitting awake all night in the library, though I was nowhere near tired. My sleeping patterns were sincerely messed up since meeting the Doctor.

He hadn't reappeared since the row over who ought to keep possession of the watch two days ago, and I'd found a piece of paper and a pen to write him a note and let him know I'd gone into town, just in case he came in search of me. I was going to take advantage of the reprieve from research I had, use it to tie up a few loose ends so I wouldn't be worrying about them if we ever left Cardiff again. Maybe that was a bit ridiculous, but getting back to normal life and my usual routine felt like the best kind of distraction.

I darted across the street in a pair of borrowed trainers, ducking into my flat and making sure the power was turned off. Whether I was back in a day or in a week, I wanted to make sure nothing would catch fire while I was gone. Imagine the excuses I'd have to come up with to explain my whereabouts.

I considered making a cup of tea, before turning for my bedroom and making good time in packing a proper bag of clothes. The room the TARDIS modelled on my own had been melted when the Doctor temporarily kicked me off, and he'd let the ship remodel however she wanted. With a psychic, sentient ship, the room was predictably just my style, all whites and soft blues and fluffy blankets. The only problem was, I had just two changes of clothes. While it might be alright for the Doctor to stay in one outfit and appear well-groomed at all times regardless of what we'd been through, I for one preferred a bit of variety.

Digging out Mum's old travelling case, the one I'd used when moving from the house to the flat, I filled it with a selection of my favourite stuff, intending on taking that to the TARDIS with me. It seemed almost instinctual to include the painting of the orange planet Mum had created years ago. The Doctor had said I could make myself at home. I intended to make myself comfortable, at the very least.

Leaving the case by the door, full and ready to go, I locked up the flat and headed for the corner and the bus stop. A day in town- going to school, going to work, eating chips- would do me good. Along the way, a paper-boy rode towards me and I caught the paper he threw my way, unfolding it to get a glimpse of the date.

I scanned the headlines first, eager to see if the Cybermen still dominated the news. They had been replaced by mundane issues- new road repairs, an upgrade for Rookwood hospital- which relieved me somewhat. They might have been dealt with, but I could still hear the _clunk-hiss-boom_ of their footsteps.

The bus pulled up as I skim-read the article about the hospital upgrade, smiling at the unknown benefactor who had left a winning lottery ticket in an envelope, addressed to the Board. Ten thousand dollars would go a long way for improving patient conditions, I knew. Absently paying for my ticket and taking a seat, I finally checked the date.

Fourth of April, 2009.

My stomach plummeted to my feet and I leapt off the bus as quickly as I could, ignoring the fact that I'd paid for a full day and had only gone one stop. The newspaper scattered on the concrete behind me as I sprinted back for the TARDIS, gasping for breath the entire way.

"We have to go!" I shouted as I pushed the doors open, sending a leather-clad man stumbling backwards. My note was flung out of his hands and he looked at me like I was the devil incarnate, which at that moment, I very well could have been. "I haven't met you yet, so we have to go!"

The Doctor's eyebrows rocketed to his hairline, receding as it was, and he regarded me with a look of utter amusement. "What's gotten into you then, madwoman?"

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down. I knew this was bad, had to be breaking some kind of time-travelling rule. I'd read Harry Potter and I'd seen _Back to the Future. _Both of them, while I'm sure were rife with time-travelling inaccuracies, had the same message; meeting yourself and changing history is _bad._

"Today is the fourth of April," I began as slowly as I could. "I met you on the eighth. Therefore, there is another version of me running around Cardiff, and since I can't remember meeting myself, we clearly have to shift."

"Ah," the Doctor nodded, turning for the console. "Steering, a bit dodgy. I thought there was something off..." I grabbed the note I'd left him, joining him by the console, as the thought of the case I left in the flat entered my mind. A laugh bubbled up my throat and escaped as the doors snapped shut and we took off for the unknown. "Don't laugh, it's not my fault!"

I shook my head, claiming a spot in the jump-seat as he leaned across from me, arms folded sulkily over his chest. "No, it's just... I can remember coming home and finding a case packed by my door. I thought someone was playing funny buggers..."

He seemed to pick up on the joke and his eyes sparked with humour, laughing at my unintentional pranking of my younger self. It was pretty funny, I suppose. My reaction when I'd come home from an early-morning meeting with a potential second job to find Mum's case packed and standing by the door... I had called the police, who brought in the sniffer dogs, who traced the intruder to me.

I still hadn't paid that fine for wasting their time, I realised, remembering the slip of paper still sitting, forgotten, in my desk drawer. It never would be paid if I could help it; I'd been genuinely scared that someone had tried to steal my clothes.

"Down to business then," the Doctor began brusquely, rubbing his hands together and beginning to pace around the console, occasionally touching something as if to distract and amuse himself. "I was searching all night but found nothing; you're something the universe has never seen before. As far as I can tell, though, it's perfectly reasonable to predict that you could absorb the energy and change. Only problem is _when. _Doing it now, when you are so startlingly human, wouldn't work."

"So we wait, then," I finished, nodding. "You said that each time we psychically connect, I change a little bit more. All we have to do is wait."

The Doctor nodded and paused where I couldn't see him, the lights of the TARDIS dimming just a little. "The bad news is each time you change, even a little, you're going to get weaker. Kia... she could kill you before you save her."

Sliding to my feet, I softly approached him and placed a hand on his tensed wrist. He flipped his hand over and grasped mine, squeezing slightly as if to reassure himself that I was still there. "It's a risk I'm willing to take, Doctor," I whispered, and although I still had doubts and fears abound, I knew I was speaking from the heart. The Doctor picked up on my sincerity and his grip on my hand tightened once again, before letting go as he spun away from me and input a destination.

"Enough of this dark talk!" he exclaimed, giving me the brightest grin he could manage. My answering one strengthened the levity of his mood and the tension faded into background noise; we would deal with it when it arose and demanded attention. "Everything right at our fingertips, just waiting to be explored. Hold on!"

The TARDIS lurched and shuddered, almost sending me rolling off if I hadn't gripped the console and braced my knees. The Doctor was laughing loud enough to be audible over the groaning of the engines and I couldn't help but be swept up in the excitement. After the stress and pain and confusion of the last few days, it felt incredible to be getting back to somewhere near normal. Well, as normal as things got with the Doctor as a travel partner.

As we spun and twirled through the Vortex, the TARDIS rocking violently all around us, my heart leapt with anticipation, the sweet taste lingering on my tongue. I had no idea where we would end up, or when, or even with whom. The feeling of being utterly unprepared made my stomach lurch a little, but one reassuring look from the Doctor had the unease replaced instantly by intense excitement.

I heard the thud and tolling of bells that signalled our landing. I rushed for the doors but the Doctor beat me to them, blocking my way and holding up a single finger.

"The Doctor lies, don't wander off, do what I'm told," I rattled off the three rules like I'd been doing it all my life, unable to stop a smirk as his expression fell.

"That isn't fair," he muttered, shaking his head. "That's something else we've got to figure out, too. Who lead you to where I just happened to appear?"

"Can't it wait?" I asked, impatient. I tried ducking under his arm and opening the doors, but he was much too fast and much too clever, blocking my way without a second thought. His thinking-face was on, the stern and faraway look he'd been wearing consistently since our fight the night before last. He had that same look whenever the watch was mentioned or visible, and I snapped my fingers in front of his face to bring him out of it. "I'll tell you what's not fair. Whisking me away into time and space then refusing to let me see. Shift, you oaf," I commanded, grateful that his scowl melted into an exasperated smile.

"Who are you calling an oaf, you ape?" he teased me right back. I flicked my hair in his direction and placed a hand on the TARDIS doors, apprehension rising now that I had gotten my wish. I had no way of knowing what was on the other side of these doors, or even if it were safe to open them. The Doctor smirked- I could see him from the corner of my eye- and folded his arms across his chest. "Scared, Kia?"

"Never, Doctor," I lied, feeling all the braver from having done so. I pulled the doors open to be met with a rush of stale air and pitch blackness. The light from the TARDIS spilled out and glittered off sculptures and masks and toys that looked decidedly Egyptian, if the faded hieroglyphics were anything to go by. I was startled when before my very eyes, the pretty symbols morphed into English words.

_The Great Pharaoh Tutankhamen._

"Welcome to the tomb of the Child King," the Doctor announced grandly, the lights brightening so I could see every inch of the cavern, including a magnificent stone coffin just a few feet away. "Howard Carter will be digging us up any minute now, so feel free to have a snoop."

As if in a dream, I drifted forward and stared, unsure as to where to go, what to see, whether I could touch... this was like being in a museum, only a thousand times better because it was _real _and I could touch it and smell it- not so pleasant, but hey- and see it where it was meant to be seen. _No human has ever seen this before. I am the first human to set eyes on King Tut's coffin..._

"Doctor," I said again, a little louder and much firmer than I'd thought I'd be. He hummed in reply, distracted by the statue of Ra looming over us, and I sat back in the dirt to just stare. "You'll never get rid of me now."

* * *

***Sniff* **One week, one chapter, left...

Thank you for the response to my suggestion of a side-series. I'll not be posting it for a while, as I'll be working on it between the sequel to Changing Me- should be up around Christmas/New Year, best guess. I'll see you all on Halloween for the final instalment of Changing Me!

**Update: 31st October.**


	21. Across the Universe

Welcome to the finale, folks.

* * *

**Twenty-One: Across the Universe**

The Doctor was right when he said getting back to regular adventures and exploring would be good for the both of us. I don't think he quite meant for things to distract us quite as much as they did, however, seeing as the longer I have been running with the Doctor, the less time we seem to have to get back to discussing the watch, or the Mysterious Girl, or anything other than the danger we were facing.

So many things I've seen, and done, too many to even begin to write down. There will always be something I forget, some tiny event that at the time it occurred, seemed like nothing, but years later became the most important detail. The colour of the sky, the feel of the dirt, the sound of someone's voice, the temperature, the way the Doctor beamed whenever we landed somewhere new.

I've now discovered that once the TARDIS lands, we can't just up and leave, because we become stuck in the time line. Fantastic. We weren't buried in Tutankhamen's tomb for very long, admittedly, but it was long enough for me to fully exercise my vocabulary of English/Welsh/French insults, which wasn't very long. Picked up a few new curses too, courtesy of the Doctor, who giggled like a schoolboy every time I attempted to swear in an alien language. I had a course in etiquette too, lucky me. Apparently, on the planet of Supercalifragilisticexpialid ocious or something, it is considered the height of rudeness to not sniff your hosts' bums and compliment the stench. I'd consider obliging without a complaint if the natives didn't release methane gas once every ninety seconds.

The Doctor is not allowed to take me to that planet, or any other planet that will result in my nose being up someone's bum, or in any other bodily orifice that omits an offensive odour. I even wrote that on a sticky-note and taped it to the console, not that he'd ever read it. He couldn't even tell me what the sign on his front door said, and he'd been with the TARDIS longer than he'd had me.

Howard Carter unburied us a few hours after we'd landed. Gave me enough time to have a good poke around a dead king's stuff, which got up Carter's nose just a bit. Seemed to think I'd pinched something... which, to be honest, I had- a little gold scarab beetle that the Doctor assured me was unimportant and harmless. And a bucket-load of sand that had been dumped on my head, as the Doctor didn't see fit to warn me that the ground was about to be broken above my head. Apparently, that is the penance I paid for _defiling his precious TARDIS._

I couldn't wait until he saw the kitchen; it was covered in sticky-notes with smiley faces drawn on. Now what, Doctor?

Howard Carter was, after the whole stealing thing was cleared up, a rather nice bloke. Bit driven, bit bossy, but nice nonetheless. Showed us around his camp, told a few ghost stories that evening... we cleared up a bit of a sticky situation with a 'mummy' that turned out to be possessed by a malicious alien tick- which looked like a scarab beetle. It worked its' way under the victim's skin, up to their brain, had a good old feast then inhabited the body. That's what it had done to the poor Pharaoh, before he was mummified and locked in a sarcophagus to stop the tick from escaping.

Opening the coffin released the tick, which, after being shut away for so many years, was quite hungry. And set its' greedy sights on the Doctor, who had the biggest and juiciest brain out. If the words of a three-inch tick that speaks English could be believed. Anyway, in failing to get the Doctor, the tick ate up half of Howard Carter's exploration team- tragedy, it was, the images still... never mind- until we managed to lure it out into the open, trap it, and dispose of it properly. And that little trinket I picked up, the gold scarab? Left it in Egypt.

We tossed it into a supernova on the way to Felspoon. I felt a bit sorry for it actually, but the Doctor assured me that the tick was one of millions that, had it been able to go free, would have feasted on Earth and the entire universe until there was nothing left. Most of its' kind were trapped inside the Time War, but one or two managed to slip out before it ended and were scattered through time and space. He called it... a travesty? A Horde of Travesties?

Anyway, Felspoon. That little planet with the swaying mountains? Yeah. Utterly stunning. Note to self, however; when the Doctor says _peaceful, _it usually isn't. We found that out within a day of landing there. Upon deciding to take a tour and hike up the mountains the day after we arrived- we'd spend the night in the little resort they had by the lake, which formed the majority of the planet's surface. The next day, we arrived at the take-off zone only to find everything playing out precisely as it had before; including ourselves arriving and checking in.

Something was wrong, predictably. I was almost starting to expect trouble when it came to the Doctor, and being anywhere near that man. He just had one of those faces, I supposed, one of those faces that attracted trouble then successfully sent it shunting off.

Nobody on Felspoon could remember time repeating itself, except for us- seeing as we weren't part of the initial cause. But the longer we stayed, the less we'd remember, and we would be trapped too. The plot was masterminded by a race named the Plyxorians, who feasted off the lives of others. Parasites, basically, but normally they just sucked out a few years and moved on. On Felspoon, however, where the locals are immortal and sterile, the Plyxorians were setting up shop.

Which we couldn't allow, for obvious reasons. The Felspoonians were becoming a buffet without even knowing it; they were stuck in the same day over and over, because none of them had the energy or the knowledge on how to move on. Time was literally stuck, and the Doctor and I had to get it going again, or we'd be stuck too. A three hour time limit seems pretty narrow, doesn't it?

But if you were to tell me that three hours isn't enough, I would know immediately that you hadn't seen the Doctor at work. I don't quite know how to explain what he did or how he did it, but the Plyxorians- a settlement of ten, the last of them- were about to be scattered off into the universe to return to their usual habits. But the Doctor introduced them to vegetation, which held the same life energy as a sentient being. He found an uninhabited jungle planet and took the Plyxorians to their new home, leaving them in peace and the Felspoonians free.

I won't ever forget the look on the Doctor's face when he realised there was a non-violent, win-win solution to the problem. His smile could have lit up the entire Earth with the brightness, and his eyes shone so brilliantly I wondered if he was crying. He hugged me so hard I nearly choked, but I didn't care because I was hugging him back just as hard.

There were other places to see, other people to visit. I couldn't possibly name them all and dedicate the time needed to properly describe what we saw with each new trip. It felt like we were constantly on the move, never staying still too long. I preferred things that way, busy and breathless, because it kept my mind busy and off the issue of the watch, which was still an elephant in the room whenever we stopped to catch our breaths. The moment the conversation seemed to turn towards the watch and what we ought to do, the Doctor distracted us both with a new adventure and a new thrilling chase.

From the waterfalls of the planet Bangalore to the deserts of Naroosh, the jungles of Umiphadz to the cities of Oozloowaltz. The wedding of the Irgrax Emperor, the funeral of the Vuffroo Prince, learning to dance the Shurian Jive- it's a sort of combination of a foxtrot and a Charleston. I made a mental note to remember the steps and teach Jack Harkness, if I ever met him again. There are others, as I've said before. I might not be able to pronounce some of the places I've been or recall the faces I've seen, but I've fallen in love with the fast-paced, courageous lifestyle of the Doctor's.

Strangely enough, it was the quiet moments in the TARDIS that cemented my desire to stay. Those few hours between the end of an adventure and a nap, or a meal, where the rest of the world was sealed off and the Doctor spoke about this place and that, his eyes lighting up as he described each adventure. Once or twice he let a name slip, someone I'd never heard of before. _Ian... Adric... Leela... Jamie... Barbara... Susan... Romana... Sarah-Jane... Ace... Tegan... Grace._

Each one was said with such reverence, such love. I'd picked up on the fact that the Doctor was much, much older than he looked- my brief visit to Torchwood and reading through the Doctor's books in the TARDIS library, the few that were translated into English, or the few he read for me handed me a whole swag of information on Time Lords. I wanted to be prepared, if I ever became one with the watch's help, I wanted to know what I was getting into. I asked about the names, curious. But I never pushed him to speak about them. Sometimes he'd share a story, sometimes he'd feign tiredness and I'd retreat to give him his space.

This arrangement worked well for me and for the Doctor. As he'd tell me tales of his life, I'd bore him with tales of mine, sharing Mum's quirks or my own interests. These quiet moments spent just getting to know the Doctor were the ones that really made me want to stay. As much as I loved the running, I enjoyed his company more, and decided one day that I'd just never leave.

I wanted to run forever.

* * *

**To my dear readers:**

**Thank you guys so much for being a huge support/inspiration over the last five months, it's been incredible to see how much you all appreciate the story, plotline and of course Kiarna Pullman herself. I've certainly had fun writing for you all!**

**To all those who have reviewed, you guys are fantastic. I wanted to do a shoutout section where I listed your names, but I gave up; you're all wonderful, so you get a generalised thank you **

**I have decided to post the side-along series, "Lost in Time", during the Third and Fourth Parts (aka, Season Two and Three of NuWho) of the Kia/Doctor saga (I've decided to call the series the 'Creation Arc'), as the side-along contains spoilers for the sequel. Bit of a wait for that, unfortunately. **

**There is, however, good news to be had from this! In two months, on the 1****st**** January, the sequel shall begin. It's called "Never Look Back" and covers the First Season of NuWho- so, hello Rose! Until then, keep an eye out for random oneshots I may post… thank you all once again, and I certainly look forward to our next meeting!**

**Somewhere in time I will find you and see you again;**

**MisfiredSynapse.**


	22. Hello, Lovelies (AN)

Hello, lovelies! I know you're all waiting very patiently to see the sequel to this story, and you're probably thinking this is the alert that I've published it. Sorry, nope. I've got good news and semi-bad news for you…

Good News: I've posted a Christmas Special featuring Kia and the Doctor's first "Christmas" together. It's an original arc, with original aliens/festivals/planets. Also, for your reading pleasure, there is a sneak-peak of what's to come in _Don't Look Back, _set to be published on January First! Check it out on my profile; "Christmas Interlude Of Sorts". I can't add a link, even an internal one... and I don't like doing the whole "remove the spaces" thing. Just click on my name up there ^ and find it :)

Bad News: still one week to go until the sequel to _Changing Me _is released! Begin the countdown!

So, is anyone else extremely excited for the Doctor Who Christmas Special? I know all you lucky Brits got it today; I've got to wait until tomorrow night. No spoilers, please! At least it's only one night, this time. Gotta love fastracking. Right, so, thanks for your patience and just know that I've been working steadily on my sequels… seven days to go, people!

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

MS x

If you're interested, head over to Twitter and follow me. My handle is Kate_Dear

I have a facebook page! Web address is as follows (remove spaces):

www. facebook pages/ MisfiredSynapse / 103035179805745?ref=hl

And my Livejournal Account, within which I post semi-regular updates and occasional fan-art:

m1sfiredsynapse .livejournal

Finally, I ought to mention that I'm heading to London in April next year. PM me ideas of what I should do/see, if you like- I've got a month to fill!


	23. Sequel (AN)

Hello everyone! Sorry for the author's notes, but this one contains good news!

The Sequel is up! Do have a look! (Just remove the spaces, yeah?)

www. fanfiction/ s/ 8859752 /1/ Don-t-Look-Back

If the link above doesn't work, head to my profile... sequel is called "Don't Look Back".

Oh; Happy New Year to all, and do enjoy!


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